


Fire and Brimstone

by orphan_account



Series: Angels & Demons [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Angel Trafficking, Angel Wings, Angel!Victor, Angel!Yuri, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Blood and Injury, Collars, Decapitation, Dom/sub, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, Drugs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Falling In Love, Family Death, First Time Blow Jobs, Forced Prostitution, Gunplay, Heavy Angst, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Kinda, M/M, Making Love, Master/Slave, Masturbation, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Rape/Non-con Elements, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rimming, Russian Mafia, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, Underage Prostitution, War, please don't sue us for emotional distress, policeman!yuuri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2018-12-26 22:14:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 49,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12068010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The Bratva does not forgive and they do not forget.In a neon lit Moscow, Otabek Altin finds himself wrapped up in something that most would consider the end of the world. A mercenary, a thief and a mob boss's guard by trade he is not a good man by most people's standard's. When he gets tasked with the job of guarding his boss's newest toy he doesn't think much of it.In a lawless society where cops are bought, Angels fall from the sky and the rich rule, everyone itches to get their hands on these beings and make them theirs. Expensive, rare, and not even considered human Angels go to the highest bidder and are left to their new owner's devices.Otabek has never questioned his orders, has never questioned what he must do to get by in such a merciless city. When one fiercely vengeful Angel enters his life Otabek finds his world turned completely upside down as he begins to question the only world he has ever known. It's up to him to get them out and a team effort to make sure they survive.





	1. The Morning Star

**Author's Note:**

> please read the tags carefully

It rains the day the sky bleeds red with fire, alarms blaring over a small town at the edges of a big city. Everyone thinks the storm must have started sometime overnight because they all wake up to a muggy and humid morning, raindrops slapping against their windows harder than they’ve ever heard in their lives. Outside it is like the sun has never risen, so dark it still seems like night hasn’t ended. 

In a house somewhere in this town someone wakes up and makes their coffee, black with two sugars and no cream just how they like it. Someone else hops into the shower and notices that their favorite body wash is running out. Another prepares for a long day almost exactly like the last one. It is, for all intents and purposes, a normal day like any other. 

Or it should be. But it’s not. 

It’s not. 

It had been happening for quite a while now but not enough that anyone has any good idea what to do about it, whatever  _ it  _ is. The first time it happened had been ten months ago and 500 miles from that small town at the edge of a big city, all the way up north at the border between one country and the next. It had been winter, it had been snowing heavily for several days but the impact had been so great and the fires so strong that it had melted all the snow, turned it all into small rivulets that ran off into the nearby rivers and lakes like they would in the spring. 

One house had flooded, five had been completely destroyed, and whether by miracle or circumstance, no one had been killed or injured by what most had assumed was the sky falling.

But it wasn’t the end of the world, not like one man had been crazily advertising in New York’s busy streets with tin foil on his head and a sign hanging with string around his neck . Not like a cult somewhere in rural Italy had been preaching for several years now and had only used this as fuel to get more sheep to join their flock. It had always been so much more than that.  

What happened to Angel X- who had been baptized this for lack of a better name due to a trail of stark white feathers and a  blurry image taken on an old flip phone was published all over televisions and the internet and newspapers without discretion - no one knows for sure. There are rumors, of course, like there are about everything. What happened to the ones that followed everyone turns a blind eye to, index fingers over their lips to keep quiet. It’s all very hush hush and as good citizens everyone must do their part to preserve the peace. 

_ It _ , however, is really a  _ business  _ and like any good business it needs products to sell. No one had batted an eye when those two kids in Oklahoma had been blasted away by the impact that burned down two cornfields ; an incident that had left several families without profit and in the streets.  

However crowds watched with sickening fascination despite the rain and bad weather as those strange men with guns hidden under their suit jackets that appeared out of nowhere and left just as quickly with their merchandise, never to be heard from again. They stayed quiet , despite worry pooling in their bellies and clouding their minds.  The men had looked dangerous enough with the tinted windows of their cars and the dark sunglasses that covered most of their faces, making them almost unrecognizable to the public. They had unimportant names that they were unwilling to give to anyone that asked but stated with thick accents that they were there for a special purpose. Whatever  _ that _ was. 

Despite the lack of attention , the kids were fine in the end, just a few broken bones. Miraculous how minor the injuries were for an explosion that threw them back over the rows of corn. But no one ever gave a damn about  _ them _ . No flowers in hospital rooms , no mention in the newspapers and no whispers hushed between children. 

What everyone really cared about was  _ her _ . 

She had no name, or if she did, like the men that surrounded her, she was unwilling to give it. She was dirty, maybe a little scratched up given how sensitive her skin looked and how hard she’d hit the ground but she was not injured ; still alive and still valuable. Her hair was spun a fine gold, almost white, and it sat in a tangled mess of dirt and debris on top of her head. When she stood on shaky legs the entire audience that had gathered took in one collective sharp inhale of stale country air as if they were scared  _ of  _ her and not  _ for _ her. Her wings, equally as dirty as her but still vibrantly beautiful, stretched out behind her . Everything about it just seemed so  _ strange _ . Most had to do double or triple takes to even try to comprehend the situation. Others just stared on, shocked and wide eyed as she got dragged away never to be heard from again. 

Later on, maybe a day or two after the incident, one man would find his way to the local news station all the way across town and, to anyone that would listen, would profess his undying love to God and claim that the Angels skin had healed right in front of their eyes. After everything , no one could outwardly dismiss his claims , but doubt still wrapping them like shroud. Surely it was impossible , but so were fallen angels. Despite his lack of evidence , he ended up on the news anyway.

Those same men from Oklahoma now appear in this small town at the edge of a big city well after the fact, a plume of dark, thick smoke already rising up into the dark, cloudy sky. There’s no exact science to it, there never had been. With how everything had gone to shit so quickly no one had had time to study the cause and effects, the hows and whys and the impossibilities of the whole thing. They just fell and all anyone knew they were never heard from again.

The impact had been so harsh that it had left a giant, gaping hole in the soft earth and had completely incinerated everything in a two-mile radius, trees burned to a crisp and knocked down by the shockwaves in a neat circle. Already a fire had started up despite the harsh rains as the residents of the town who hadn’t or simply couldn’t leave pressed their faces right up to their window panes and looked on through the rain at the carnage that had been left behind, just thankful that none of their houses had been damaged and none of their lives had been taken. They all felt it though, the way the ground had shook and their windows had rattled right in their panes, violent and angry unlike anything they’d ever experienced before. 

The men moved like professionals, weaving their cars through the trees that remain standing, and carefully driving over the ones that had fallen, though not much remained of those after the fire had ravaged through and consumed everything it could reach. Even from a distance they could feel the heat, could smell the scorched earth and wood and whatever else had been unlucky enough to be there at the wrong time and the wrong place. They move slowly enough so that by the time they reach the crater most of the fire has died down. By then there’s only a few flames and glowing embers that are quickly going out. Mud runs down the edges of the hole in small rivulets, gathering at the bottom along with the stark white feathers slowly growing filthy and mixing in with everything else. 

It had fallen and gotten buried in the dirt. They move quickly , despite the rain. Abandoning their safe havens to gather what they have come for. Their eyes move towards the mound , focusing on the hints of creamy skin peaking through. They watch it struggle , the way it moves around and tries to free itself from it’s suffocating prison, clawing at whatever it can reach with bent fingers like cat claws. 

With small amounts of hesitation two men put their comfort aside for the time being and slide down the side of the hole carefully so as not to fall flat on their faces , but still getting mud in their shoes , their clothing and their hair in the process. They were not here to help, just to move the process along quicker. The filth on their clothes would be worth it later when they go home with their pockets full of cash and happy smiles on their faces, content after a job well done and the prospect of a warm shower at the end of the night. 

It makes a small noise when they touch it, skin still sensitive and bruised from the fall, covered in small cuts all over. They barely have time to notice the wounds before they’re healing and disappearing completely. They’re not gentle with it , fingers digging into its skin and leaving marks as they grab it by the arms and force it to stand on inexperienced legs , that shake as if they have never learned how to walk or stand or do anything but exist. It’s completely naked, dirt sliding off it’s skin with the rains that batter all of those present and it’s not long before a head of blond hair is revealed and they all realized that it’s a boy. 

Not a  _ boy _ , not really. Everyone has been calling them Angels for the longest time now, that seemed to be the go to name and it fit, it really did, but under the eyes of the law they aren’t even  _ human _ and that makes this a hell of a lot easier to do because no one would be there to stop them later.  No law , no protection , fair game. 

They drag him up and out rather ungracefully and unceremoniously as if he were nothing more than a rag doll . It doesn’t help that he’s acting like one, body completely limp and unresponsive as they lay him out face up despite the rain, completely vulnerable and naked with his belly exposed. But he doesn’t look one bit afraid. It had always been like this. It always took them some time to come to and realize what was going on around them. 

Someone comes forward and snaps a thick metal collar around his neck that’s cold to the touch and heavy against his throat. Next, they sit him up and bind his hands behind his back, already knowing that he won’t be going anywhere but just wanting to take extra precautions. Just in case. Always just in case. They pick him up again after that, his head rolling back between his shoulder blades, his eyes glassy, and between four men that carry him to a strategically parked and unmarked white van that’s empty sans two seats up front, one for the driver and the just-in-case man with double the guns and a knife in his sock. They throw him in the back, not even offering a blanket to keep him warm despite the fact that he’s now shaking almost violently on the cold and dirty floor of that van, small frame curled up making him look even smaller than he already is . His wings wrapped are around him to try and provide some semblance of warmth though it’s no use if they’re just as wet as him. Someone makes a joke as the back doors slam shut and he hears some men laugh, sound distorted from how dizzy and disoriented he is. Everything sounds so loud, everything is so bright. He can’t even open his eyes, scared of what he’ll see if he does, scared of how much everything  _ hurts _ . 

No one notices the blood that’s on him, quickly drying on his skin so that there’s that uncomfortable itch that he can’t scratch because his hands are bound. No one notices the crooked way one of his wings sits on his back, the way it hangs limper than the other and hurts when he tries to move it. Useless. No one notices anything until much, much later. 

Now, his mind is muggy and thick with a heavy fog that makes even thinking an impossible task. 

He falls asleep and doesn’t stop shaking even then. 

-

A business, like any other, needs customers. Of course, this is a fundamental need; without paying customers there never was any business to begin with. It’s all rather lucrative, really. The system had been set up sometime after the first angel fell, after the shock died down and one man realized that this could be a profitable venture to partake in, if done correctly. Easy to do when you already have large sums of money at hand to motivate the right kinds of people and enough connections to get you anywhere. 

It always takes just one man. 

Alexei Mednikov is, to all that know him, a man to fear. He’s tall, imposing, with broad shoulders and a jawline sharp enough to cut glass. His eyes are almond shaped, dark, and inquisitive, always taking in everything around him without fault or miss. He’s a businessman by all means and a smart one at that. He didn’t get to where he is today by playing dumb or by giving second chances to those that fail him time and time again. The  _ Bratva _ , he always says, does not forgive nor does it ever forget.

It starts in Russia. Alexei’s empire is a grand and rather old one, having been passed down the Mednikov line from father to son and so on. The chain had gone unbroken and mostly undetected for many years, it’s reach so large and it’s influence so great it had already broken through into several countries like a weed that refused to be killed despite the many people that have tried. Alexei doesn’t like to call it a gang or a mob or any other distasteful name like that. No, to him it is a family with him as the center of the household, providing for all those that care to serve him. He is not a ruthless leader nor an unfair one and despite everything that everyone says about him he likes to consider himself something of a good man.. 

On his large hands he wears several heavy and expensive rings, each encrusted with large jewels that glint even under the lowest of lights. He owns a watch for every day of the week, Tuesday’s more expensive than Monday’s and so on but each more expensive than anything anyone else would have been able to afford. He always dresses his best, something that had been emphasized by both his grandfather and father alike as the first step to success and respect among their men. He has several properties all around the world, from New York to Spain to Japan.  But his all time favorite one, the one that he spends the most time in and runs his vast empire from as if it were a palace and he were its ruling king right in the center of it all, was in Russia. It’s in a secluded spot, far away enough from the city center to go mostly undetected but close enough so that those that had any business being there wouldn’t have much trouble getting to it. 

There is, first and foremost, the large iron wrought gate at the very edge of the property with Alexei’s stylized initials on it indicating who’s turf that was as if there had ever been any doubt about it in the first place. It’s controlled from the inside by an app in Alexei’s phone that next to that also allows him access to the strategically placed cameras all around. Once permission is granted to enter and the gate is opened one would then pass through the long and winding driveway and subsequently through a small forest of pines and oaks that allowed for much needed privacy. Past that is the garden, which every day is carefully watered, weeded and trimmed. Any visitors would stop their cars by the beautifully carved marble fountain, the visage of an immortalized and beautiful woman looking over everyone. Keys were handed over to one of the valets who would then move the car out of sight into one of Alexei’s many garages. Through the large double oak doors one would then enter the tastefully decorated and airy foyer lined with white Gardenia bunches freshly picked from the gardens and placed in tastefully decorated vases sent as a gift all the way from China. The houses concept is open and airy with more windows than one can count and a set of large stairs leading up to the equally as open second floor.  

The house is usually brimming with people at all times. Alexei is an important man with important things to attend to and most days he finds it easier to have people go to him instead. He has around the clock security, each man large and hard-eyed from years of experience in the field. They’re hand selected specially by him, all of them people he can trust and men who have proven their worth and loyalty to him time and time again throughout the years. Each who meets him greets him with a kiss on each of his ringed hands and an appropriate greeting depending on whatever time of day it is. That’s the way it has been for so long nobody has thought to stop and think about the customs, especially not Alexei who finds a special sort of satisfaction in the simple act of submission to him. 

 

It’s late into September and everything, for once, feels like it’s going according to plan. Alexei feels light, like a weight has lifted off his shoulders and as he gets ready for the night he lets a smile flit across his face. It’s very small, barely there, even if he’s alone in the quiet of his grand room with the large windows that overlook his gardens. He’s wearing his best suit, an Alexander Amosu he’d had tailor made just for him that he’d had shipped all the way to Moscow. It was an original that had cost him a pretty penny though it had barely made a dent in his bank account and that’s made of the finest wool in the world. The buttons are made of eighteen karat gold and the cufflinks are in the shape of roses. On his feet he has on a pair of Edward Greens, again tailor made just for him, the leather fine and comfortable. 

Preparations have been well underway for the better part of the month. The day before, bright and early in the morning, his shipment had arrived in unmarked white vans. He had been there himself to oversee it much like he had been for the first shipment. His men marched them out of the vans one by one, not at all gentle but careful nonetheless. There were five of them, two more than there had been last time. They all looked so beautiful as they’d been unloaded, even given how filthy they were but it wasn’t only their physical beauty that intrigued Alexei but rather their monetary worth and how much money they would be bringing him. 

They’d been at a warehouse, Alexei and a handful of his men, that had been converted a few years back to suit all of their needs. Originally meant for the girls Alexei had transported over from other countries the stalls were a bit small but they still did the job. It was a sort of small operation he had going on there but a set of horribly underpaid women did the job just fine, washing and grooming the Angels with almost expert precision until they were presentable. They untangled the knots in their hair, carefully cleaned the dirt from under their fingernails and groomed the feathers on their wings. The angels had kept their collars on and their hands were bound behind their backs for safety’s sake. Most of them weren’t a threat, too bewildered and overwhelmed by their current situation to even complain at how they were manhandled but for others that wasn’t the case. Alexei had enough experience trafficking to know that among the hopeless there was always the unwilling who refused to give in to their fates no matter how impossible it seemed to escape it. There was always those that fought back.

He was already the subject of big talk among his rather large inner circle, his name passing from one set of lips to another as if it were a secret no one was too willing to give away. They were the next rage, these things. Much more safer and easier than shipping drugs and normal humans alike across borders, Angels had found themselves a rather special place in Alexei’s agnostic and cold as ice heart. The most important part, though, was that they were  _ rare _ and this meant that he could charge for them as much as he wanted without someone raising a complaint over his unfair prices. Supply and demand, he supposes, could be a beautiful thing. 

When he descends the stairs, seemingly the last to arrive to his own party, everyone turns to look at him. There is a certain air of confidence and strength about him that naturally draws those seeking power and wealth- or those who they themselves already have it. He’s always been a man that knows how to get what he wants, whether it be with words or violence if all else fails, and it shows with the elegance and opulence of his home and all the others. It also shows in his guests, in the way their jewels shine under the golden lights and in their obviously expensive clothing. 

Immediately, almost as soon as he reaches the last step, there are people vying for his attention, forming in a crowd around him and trying to talk over each other all at once, hoping that he’ll notice one of them. Alexei just laughs quietly, always polite even in the noise and confusion and asks for a little space, his wish almost immediately being granted as the crowd takes a step back almost simultaneously. 

None of these people are his friends, not really. Alexei doesn’t  _ have _ friends. He can’t and it was also something that had been ingrained into him at a very young age. You can never, ever truly trust anyone here, his father had said when Alexei was just ten years old and had been betrayed for the very first time, young and stupid enough to trust anyone that walked into his life. Alexei had inner circles, he had connections, and he had customers but he didn’t have  _ friends _ . 

He moves around the crowd easily, moving from one conversation to another almost expertly. He’s enchanting, drawing people to him naturally, the flame that attracts the moths in the dark. As a man of forty- two Alexei is well educated and well versed in multiple subjects which is easily one of his most redeeming qualities, if not the only one. 

Across the room Mila Babicheva stands in a stunning red dress that matches her hair and subsequently  the vibrant lipstick she’s applied across her lips. She’s hanging off the arm of a man whose name she hasn’t bothered to learn despite all the times she’s been with him, but who’s paying her well enough for her to put up with the obscenities he’s been whispering in her ear all night without pause. He doesn’t seem to be well versed in the art of seducing women and has probably never slept with one he hasn’t had to pay first. Although it also helps that she’s a good actress and has had to deal with far worse men than this one. 

She’s spent most of the night drinking and admiring the opulence of it all. She’s no stranger to Alexei, his home or his business but it always leaves her a bit speechless when she’s there knowing just miles away people are starving and sleeping on the streets. It doesn’t surprise her nor does it really leave her too astounded. She’s used to it by now and though she’s a simple woman with simple means she knows she could never give this up. 

The party, which really isn’t a party at all, has been well underway when they’re brought in single file and ranked by armed guards. Alexei has always been careful when it came to his things and now was obviously no exception. They’re vibrant, nearly glowing and easily standing out amongst the crowd buzzing with eager energy. Their hair is fine, colors ranging from a light honey-brown to nearly white and their cheeks are a rosy pink but whether it’s a product of makeup or not Mila doesn’t know. Their most telling features, however, are their wings, tips of the primary feathers brushing against the polished floor. Now they are secured by a leather harness that wraps around their base and across their chests, stopping them from suddenly spreading out and hurting someone. They have gold dusted collars around their necks with sheer shirts and tight black shorts which made it easier to check out the merchandise before buying. 

“Better than the girls they used to bring in,” the guy beside her tells her, a sleazy smirk on his face that disgusts her to no end. The girls he’s talking about were the last venture Alexei had partaken in, transporting impoverished girls that were promised a better future over borders and selling them off to the highest bidder or into prostitution rings, whatever got him the most money. Alexei didn’t care much either way.  Mila easily remembered  _ those _ parties. She hadn’t wanted to go, not at all, but nobody dared to go alone and the money the one desperate man waved in front of her face teasingly had been too good to pass up. She was low on rent money that month and despite her reluctance it had been too easy to accept the invitation, too easy to doll herself up and put on a smile for those that looked at her and then let it drop when they once again turned away. 

It had been, to put it plainly, horrifying. Mila, who had seen several atrocities occur right before her eyes had never seen something as horrible as that. They had looked so lifeless, so hopeless. They had been brought out much like the Angels had now, had worn the collars that administered sedatives right into their bloodstreams and if that didn’t work, it shocked them. They had let themselves be pushed around the room, had let themselves be touched and groped and practically fucked right there for everyone to see. There was no humanity here. At the end of the night everyone gave their money over and went home with their new toys. 

Mila never thought herself as a lucky woman , but despite everything she knew she was. She had made the choice to become a call girl, a desperate choice but a choice nonetheless. Those girls didn’t have the luxury of that.  It was still happening right under everyone’s noses despite this being the mob’s main focus now didn’t mean Alexei still wasn’t making money off of that. Somehow, for whatever reason, this was better. It’s not trafficking, they’d say. Most compared it to buying a pet from a breeder and didn’t worry too much about it after that.

With a glass of champagne held between dainty fingers and the man’s hand on her ass they weave through the crowd, wanting to get a closer look but not intending to buy. Mila knows this man has money but not the kind of money required to buy an Angel. This fact made him a bit put off, not quite angry about his lack of resources but almost . He didn’t really fit into the opulent crowd who all had more money than him and didn’t bother to hide it. He just wanted to admire and quietly tell her about how much he wished she was one of them so then she wouldn’t be able to say no to him no matter how much she wanted to. Later she knows he’ll take her to his penthouse that overlooks the city and he’ll fuck her hard and fast while pulling her hair even after she’s told him she doesn’t like that but she puts up with it because that’s what he pays her for. When he falls asleep, knocked out cold from his five minute fucking, Mila will get up. She’ll get dressed and steal a little extra cash from his expensive leather wallet before departing, hoping to never see him again but knowing she will. 

Now she’s stuck and as unsavory and disgusting as this is she isn’t in the position to simply tuck tail and run in the other direction as far way from there as possible without a possibility of turning back. So she remains and she watches. Her veins are buzzing with alcohol that somehow makes it all easier to handle. They have them all standing in a neat line in the center of the room as their admirers and potential buyers gather around. She’ll carry this with her, she knows, for a long time. 

The Angels are vibrant, practically glowing, but their eyes seem limp and dead, unseeing as they stare straight ahead or unfocused as they fall on whoever is standing in front of them, touching without permission like they already own them. Mila knows this look maybe too well. The one at the very end of the line still has his hands bound behind his back, his head hanging low with his hair falling over his eyes. It’s long, blond, and silky smooth, hanging down to his shoulders and curling slightly at the ends. Mila pauses. His slender shoulders are slumped in obvious defeat and there is a certain air around him, like bitter and intense anger that rolled off of him in waves. It was suffocating, like the fight had been beaten right out of him without a chance for mercy but he was still struggling to fight on. 

Mila’s not in the business of touching other people without their consent. Actually, she’s not in the business of doing anything without anyone’s consent, something that she’d learned the hard way she didn’t like and so easily assumed that others must feel the same way as her. Now, however, she made a special exception and carefully reached out, the boy flinching away when the knuckle of her index finger brushed against his cheek. 

“You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” Mila says quietly, not getting a response but not expecting one either. With gentle and careful fingers under his chin she coaxes his head up, slightly taken aback at how much hatred fills his bright green eyes when they meet hers but she can’t blame him. He’s nearly drowning in it. “Don’t worry. If you smile and play nice it’ll make it easier.” Though it does very little in a way of comfort it’s the only thing she can think of to say. Her stomach fills with dread at the thought of the fate that awaits this poor boy, something that she doesn’t let herself think about often because then it would just eat her away constantly. 

What she couldn’t have anticipated, however, was this:

Alexei Mednikov is a big man, easily towering over most, if not all of his guests. This extra added height makes him intimidating, which isn’t to say that if he were any shorter he wouldn’t be but his height just adds an extra layer to it.  This makes most people take a step back and analyze every decision they ever made to get them to the point that they’d have to even be in the same room as him. 

He’s been studying his merchandise in all their carefully washed and groomed glory. When he reaches the boy at the end of the line with his hands bound together and his head once again lowered he asks the guard standing quietly behind the boy, “why is he tied?” to which the man promptly fills him in on the Angel’s unruly and violent behavior, how he’d attacked anyone and anything that was close to him, and how he’d pose a threat to the guests if he weren’t bound.

If he had spoken he most likely would have said something about how rough those women were, how they’d pulled at his hair and pinched his cheeks until they almost bled. He would have berated the guards for how roughly they’d treated him and the lewd jokes they’d cracked at his expense as if were nothing more than a slab of meat to be salivated over. He would have, very surely, said something about how the last place he wanted to be was there. He stays quiet. 

“And his collar?”

“Activated, Sir. One wrong move and it shocks him.”

Alexei nods in understanding, arms held behind his back. Precautions were precautions, after all. The collars had been his idea, a small price to pay to make sure everything ran smoothly.

“Look at me,” he tells the boy, who is so much smaller than him he almost looks like a child standing next to an angry and overbearing adult. He doesn’t move, won’t move. This is his last defiant act after everything else has been so brutally beaten out of him. Alexei hates to repeat himself and so when a moment of silence drags on for too long his patience escapes him and he reaches out, fingers gripping the boy’s cheeks so roughly they’re sure to leave a mark and forces him to look up at him, neck almost bent all the way back between his shoulders as they stare at one another, Alexei’s dark and steely gaze against green eyes filled with loathing. It’s nothing compared to Mila’s gentle touch. At least with her there had been a choice. “What’s your name?” Silence. Alexei’s grip tightens and he frowns. He’s never seen one so defiant, most of them becoming completely pliant and submissive after the first few beatings and shock treatments from their collars but this one… 

Alexei enjoys a good challenge, always has. He enjoys breaking in even the most stubborn bastards until they’re kneeling at his feet from just a look and a flick of his wrist, begging for his attention like bitches in heat who can’t get enough. He enjoys the display of submission, enjoys it when they give themselves over to him almost without thinking about it. Just looking at the boy he can tell he’s pretty- all of them are- his features fine and delicate but seemingly stuck on a permanent look of anger. His body is slender, legs long and supple and Alexei wants him if only to be able to break him in, to beat that defiance out of him. 

“Your name.”

The boy jerks away from him and Alexei lets him if only to hear him say, “I am the Morning Star,” in a voice hoarse and thick from disuse. He then spits but there’s either not much force behind it or he’s just not a good shot because it lands on the floor, close to Alexei’s shoes but not quite. There is no damage done but Alexei can’t let it go, knowing that unpunished behavior will just be repeated later on. The slap across his face comes so loudly and suddenly the boy barely has time to react, head snapping to the side and eyes going wide with shock. The injured cheek blooms a pretty red color that his long hair will do a good job of hiding later when it takes a few days for the mark to completely disappear. They don’t notice the room has gone quiet, only the music playing in the background, as everyone turns to look at them, equally as shocked.

“You don’t disrespect me,” Alexei warns him, a hard edge to his voice that he typically only uses for insubordinates and those that have crossed him. He’s dealt out a punishment, he expects the boy to not piss him off again so quickly after that but he still itches to get his hands on him in more ways than one. “But I guess you can learn.” To the guard he says, “take him to the back. This one is not for sale.”

Mila, who had quietly watched the whole thing silently and unnoticed in a dark corner and who already knew that Alexei was a terrible man, couldn’t say that she was surprised at all but that awful feeling in her gut only seemed to get worse as she watched the boy get dragged away. He must have still been in shock from the slap because he didn’t put up much of a fight when the guard grabbed him rather roughly. As they got close to the door the guard pulled him forward particularly hard and he fell with a harsh sound to the floor, causing his collar to go off and shock him. He cried out softly, as if not wanting others to witness his pain and Mila winced as if it had been she who had been shocked instead. Nobody cared, not enough to linger on it anyway, and when the boy disappeared Alexei plastered a smile back on his face and the party moved on.

-

Otabek Altin wakes up for the first time in a long time not to the shrill sound of his alarm clock but to the sound of his own harsh breathing. It’s early morning, the sun just barely breaking through the horizon but traffic is heavy under his window, the day already well underway except for him, who seems to be staying behind a lot these days. He lays motionless in bed for a long while eyes still closed and his dream replaying in his head like a bad song stuck on an endless loop. The soft rain beats gently against his windows and it’s so quiet in the room all he can hear is that and his own shallow breathing.

He’s still tired, eyes stinging and heavy but he knows that he won’t be able to go back to sleep any time soon. It was his own personal curse; once he woke up he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again after that and so the day starts without him intending for it to. Already his life had become something of a routine and it had gotten to the point that he could clearly envision the way it would go down to the smallest of details. It wasn’t dull work by any means, he had just gotten used to it over time.

His room has become a mess since the last time he cleaned it. Strewn all about the floor are his clothes, crumpled up on heaps whether dirty or clean. His shoes are in a similar state though his favorite pair are set neatly by his bed so when he gets up in the mornings he doesn’t have to walk on the cold floor. Every day he reminds himself to clean but he never gets around to it, always having to stay late for something or another, always having something to do that’s much more important than keeping his home clean. Still, he doesn’t mind it much. He’s found a sort of comfort in the mess and despite it has never had much trouble finding what he needs, when he needs it.

He finds his way around easily even in his half-asleep stage, eyes nearly closed and heavy with sleep. What he needs is a cold shower even if it’s not  _ quite  _ what he wants. It does wake him up, though, almost as soon as the freezing water hits his sleep warm skin, gasping quietly. He washes his hair and shaves the stubble that has grown on his face over the course of a few days In the mirror he admires his tattoo for a moment, the simple cross on his chest part of a still growing collection. He remembers when he’d first gotten it, how badly it’d hurt but how reverently he’d cared for it after until it healed perfectly. Now it would always be a part of him. On his left knee held three simple stars, on his right hand a crown, and on his forearm a dagger with a snake wrapped daintily around it, fangs fiercely and defiantly exposed, a threat to all that dared to look at it and in turn, him. 

Carefully, he attempts to fix his hair, using his fingers to untangle the stubborn knots and push it back off his forehead. He runs his wet hands down the prickly sides of his head, turning from side to side and deciding that he needs a haircut soon before it gets too long. 

He’s still thinking about his dream by the time he gets to the kitchen and starts making breakfast, something that would usually be calming to him. It was something about the act of cutting and preparing food that was soothing to him, but that morning it doesn’t seem to be working it’s magic too well. He feels restless, all those images still flashing behind his eyelids, the sounds. He thought he’d left all of that behind, hadn’t had a dream since he was twenty-four and still a runner fresh off Canada Airlines and sure he could take on the world. It had seemed so real his ears were still ringing from the deafening blast of a gun, so close to him he could practically feel the bullet leave the barrel. 

Breakfast is a simple and quiet affair. It’s just him there and because his table is uncomfortably big for just one person he instead sits on the couch, legs tucked under him as he flips through the channels with his plate of food balanced precariously on his knee. He’s just wearing a pair of sweatpants, his hair still wet from the shower and dripping on to his shoulders but he doesn’t mind. He settles on a channel that he likes and in turn he himself settles into the simple monotony of his own life. 

It’s not until much later, as he’s tucking his gun in the holster at his hip, that he’s forced back into his own head and the sudden harshness of his reality. Otabek’s never been unthankful, he’s never taken what he has for granted. He likes his small two bedroom apartment in the city, he likes the fact that he has a fridge full of food and enough money in his bank account that he doesn’t have to complain about much in that end. He had been raised rather frugally; growing up his mother was a woman who knew how to save what little money they had and he supposes some of that had rubbed off on him too because he lived his life not really needing much. He doesn’t think about Canada much these days or anything that had to do with him being there or the people he’d left behind. It’s not like he could forget. The simple truth of it all is that he never can. The ghost of his past still haunts me, lurking at every corner. Otabek Altin is, to put it simply, not the best of men. Now his dream has left a sour taste in his mouth that he can’t see to be able to get rid of.

He drives to work with a stoic look on his face and the radio turned off. Traffic is awful at this time in the morning and it’s one of the things he hates most about living in Moscow. He leaves at the time he always does, a gun at his hip, two more in the trunk of his car, and another in the glove compartment within easy reach. Just in case. He’s learned that he can never be too careful and even if he hasn’t had to use the extra ones in a long time carrying them with him is a habit he hasn’t been able to break. He considers himself a careful man. He doesn’t take risks, he never rushes where he doesn’t need to and he’s learned to always, always think about himself first and foremost before considering others.. He knows what he’s doing, has a steady hand when it comes time to shoot and an equally as steady gaze. He likes to think that he’s never hesitated and that he never would. Alexei tells him to do something and Otabek does it; he’s not in the business of questioning his orders. 

When he gets to the house he finds that Mila is already there waiting for him like she is almost every morning, standing in the foyer with her arms crossed over her chest. There are bags under her eyes that she hasn’t bothered to cover up with makeup. As a greeting she kisses his cheek and wraps a small hand around his arm. The place is already bustling and full of people. Otabek doesn’t mind the noise, doesn’t mind all those bodies moving around. All of those years working for Alexei have made him immune to most things. Some of the men already there greet him as they pass him and others barely spare him a glance.

The last time he’d seen Mila was the night before, sitting cross legged on her messy bed as he’d watched her get ready for the party in front of the full body mirror. It wasn’t something that he was particularly interested in but Mila had relayed the details to him, how it would go, what the Angels looked like, the absurd prices they went for and how no one ever complained about them because it was worth it. Otabek, who all in all wasn’t a complete stranger to the extravagant lives of the people Alexei surrounded himself with, couldn’t say that he was that surprised nor that he cared about it quite as much as Mila did. He’d never seen an Angel up close, had never spoken to one, and had only caught a glimpse from afar while at Alexei’s house. He doesn’t have much sympathy for things he’s never interacted with. It’s not in his job description to care about things he doesn’t have to.

“They’re people,” Mila explained, a frown marring her features as she tried to pin her hair up. Otabek doesn’t have the heart to tell her that technically, they’re not. She’d just call him heartless if he did, a statement that wouldn’t be too far off from the truth. “And they’re just selling them off like  _ things _ .”

“Not really.” Otabek said, eyes glued to his phone as he scrolled mindlessly through articles he wasn’t bothering to read. He had his opinion on things and while Mila wasn’t exactly wrong about the selling part he also thought that she was exaggerating a bit much. “Why are you surprised?”

“Why aren’t  _ you _ ?” Mila countered. She sighed, giving up on her hair for the time being and turned to Otabek, sitting down beside him on the bed. The mattress dips and Otabek leans against her. “It’s disgusting.”

“Maybe but there’s nothing I can do about it so what’s the point in worrying about it?”

“They’re turning them into sex slaves!”

“What are you doing Mila? You’re going to get frown lines.” He pulls her close and rubs soothingly at the spot between her eyebrows until the skin there smooths over and she finally looks once again like the woman that he knows so well. She drops the subject and the conversation moves on in other directions.

He doesn’t want her to worry about it too much because he knows her and also knows that sometimes it’s all she thinks about. He isn’t sure, not one-hundred percent because that is one world he doesn’t want to delve into too deeply but he doesn’t think they’re treated as badly as Mila makes it out to be. They’re in rich hands and rich hands are good hands in Otabek’s book There are always other people worse off. Otabek doesn’t let himself think about it if he can help it. 

“What’s going on?” He asks when he sees her that morning, noticing that frown on her face again and the unusual buzz of energy thrumming through the other people there. She doesn’t say a thing to him, not while there are other potential listeners around. She waits patiently, guiding Otabek with that hand on his arm to a secluded corner where no one notices them or if they do they pretend not to. She’s chewing on her lip almost nervously, gaze turned down. “Mila?”

She looks up at him then and quietly says, “Alexei got himself a new pet.”


	2. Vorovskoy Mir

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for internalized homophobia, mentions of rape, mentions of abortion, and thoughts of suicide.

The first thing Otabek thinks when he sees him is that he’s beautiful. Spread out on the bed, hair splayed out around his head like a halo, and a single slender arm lifted above his head where it remains cuffed to the headboard, the other curled up on his stomach, beautiful is the only thing he could possibly be. Achingly, miserably beautiful. Later he’ll feel guilty about this; everyone thought he was beautiful. To Otabek he would come to be so much more than that.

He’d gone up alone through the winding flights of stairs to the second floor and into his room, where there was a single armed guard positioned upfront by the door who didn’t even bother to glance at him upon his arrival. He looked bored, eyes cast off somewhere far away and arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the wall, wholly unprofessional but uncaring all the same. Mila had stayed behind claiming one of the guys had asked to see her but Otabek knew it wasn’t true. She’d stayed behind because she couldn’t see it up close- it’d just make it too real for her. So Otabek had gone on ahead on his own per Alexei’s instructions, his sole destination the last door to the left, right at the end of the hall.

It’s a small room compared to the others in the house though not modest by any means and it might just be bigger than Otabek’s own bedroom. The bed is large, the duvet a stark white that neatly blends in with his spread wings- the very wings that had taken Otabek almost too long to notice. There is a large flatscreen by the bed that’s currently turned off, a set of double doors that leads out to a small balcony, a single nightstand and a dresser with a mirror.

It’s quiet in there and even if the boy’s face is turned away from him Otabek can see his features, fine like a painting’s, his golden hair, the way his nose scrunches up as he frowns angrily. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t even looked at him and Otabek, for some reason, feels offended by this, doesn’t like the way it makes him feel like he’s not even worth being looked at.

Otabek turns to the guard and says, “I’ll take it from here.” The man looks at him but doesn’t question the order that he’s given.

“Look but don’t touch,” he says with a sleazy smirk on his face as he turns on his heels walks away. “Remember who he belongs to.” As if the collar around his neck weren’t enough indication.

Otabek feels a shiver of disgust run down his spine and it’s not until the guard has completely disappeared that he chances a step inside past the threshold and fully into the room. It smells faintly of disinfectant and lilac; not the best of combinations. He clears his throat, not getting a reaction even then. Alexei had warned him he was difficult, that he wouldn’t get much of a response from him, but Otabek can’t stop himself from trying. He can’t stand the silence.

“What’s your name?”

Otabek presses his palm flat against the corner of the bed, feeling the mattress dip under his weight, and the Angel flinches away from him. He curls his legs up and away from Otabek as if he were scared to be touched. Otabek takes a step back, not having expected that reaction at all.

-

Earlier that morning, after some debate on whether to call a veterinarian or a doctor, Alexei had settled on the latter and called for a trusted doctor that had served him and his family more than once through the years. He was a weathered man, old but his wrinkled hands were steady and his eyesight was still sharp. The first time Alexei had gotten shot it was that man who had pulled the bullet out and neatly stitched up the wound so well only a faint scar remained. When his father had died it was that man who had calmly checked his pulse and called the time of death.

It had taken Alexei a rather long time to notice it but in his defense he had been quite busy. The wing, which hung limp and a little crooked compared to the other, took away from the overall perfection that Alexei sought out in these things. He could tell that it hurt. The Angel didn’t make a single noise and it was like his face was set in stone from how little emotion he actually showed but he kept it tucked tight against his body and most of the time and tried his hardest not to move it. It was like he was trying to hide this weakness of his but it was too late- Alexei had already seen it.

He’d grabbed his face, blunt nails digging into his skin almost painfully. He’d noted the pretty shape of his lips, the softness of his cheeks and the steely look in his eyes. There was no way around it- Alexei was already thinking of the ways to break him in and make him his entirely. He admires the Angel, who had yet to give him a name, but it didn’t really matter if he did or not. Alexei didn’t need one to fuck him. He’d been naked, chest flushed from the heat of his shower and hair dripping all over his shoulders. His wings left a trail of wetness on the neatly polished floor and even when he started shivering Alexei refused to dress him.

The doctor arrived. He doesn’t really look like a doctor at all but rather a grandfather of sorts with a tender smile to match. He’d been let right through immediately, most of those men knowing him from those times he’d taken care of them, too. He heads up the stairs per the instructions that were given to him by the man at the door and stops dead at the doorway. He looks a little astounded, eyes growing wide under bushy white eyebrows. It’s like he’s never seen an Angel and he probably hasn’t. Alexei understands the awe he must be in but there is no time to waste.

“Well I’m no expert on this kind of thing,” the old man had said without pretense or preamble but had quickly gotten to work anyway simply because Alexei demanded it. His hands, along with being steady, were also gentle and as much as the Angel hated to be touched, and as vulnerable as he felt with his naked form body still on display for all to see, there wasn’t a single thing that he could do about it. He ground his teeth and let the man touch his wing, let him stretch it out and prod at it as if it were some sort of experiment and he were the subject. It did hurt, he wouldn’t deny that though he would never admit it aloud. It ached, it stung if he moved it too far back or even moved it at all but he refused to show pain or weakness. He could still see the way his blood had spilled from the wound on that first night, the bright redness mixing with rain and mud and the bright fire that had surrounded him, eager to burn him alive but wholly unsuccessful. The man didn’t speak to him directly, just hummed pensively to himself and the room was stuck in an awkward and tense silence that could not be escaped.

After the man was done he pulled Alexei to the side, voice dropping. “It broke and didn’t set right. I’d recommend taking the collar off, breaking it again and letting it set correctly. They heal quickly, yes? It shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

Alexei thinks about it for all of five seconds. He could do it; his bones were fine and thin. They’d probably snap like a twig under his hands. It’d be real easy to do, not much trouble at all and with the collar off and a few days to clear the drugs out of his system it would heal quickly and without any problems. Then it would be just fine and the Angel would be perfect again just like he wanted him.

“Leave it,” he tells the doctor instead, sparing the boy a glance from the corner of his eye. He’s not sure if he can hear them but doesn’t care either way. Defective, he thinks, but easier to control.

From where he is Otabek can kind of see it. He’d seen enough breaks and fractures to know one when he sees it and even if this one had healed freakishly fast before the collar had been placed on him it hadn’t set right. It must be painful, he knows.

-

The boy was dressed now in a pair of shorts and a loose white t-shirt that seem to swallow his small frame whole. It was obvious he’d been taken care of before he’d gotten there. Groomed might be the better word for it, though. Washed and prepared and made to look pretty for the man that had placed that collar on him.

“I’m Otabek.”

It’s so quiet Otabek wonders if the Angel could even speak at all. He hates Mila for not going with him. She’d always been good at this kind of thing and where Otabek was just a man of action and not of words he’d always had her there to make up for it. Now she’d ducked out, gone at the first sign of trouble. He couldn’t blame her for it but there was a certain sense of betrayal lingering.

Otabek looks around awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his head. He’s not sure what to do.

“Would you like to watch TV?”

There’s no answer. Otabek turns it on anyway, finding that it’s too loud and it startles them both until he manages to get it down again. He mumbles an apology, his cheeks burning. The Angel has curled up again, eyes cast off to the far wall and not on the television as if nothing has happened.

He starts to resent Alexei for making him do this. Otabek has never been a man who takes care of things. Growing up he had his toys, his own things but they never lasted long. He didn’t care if they broke or not, didn’t care what happened to them after he lost interest in them and they inevitably ended up under his bed or in the trash because his disgruntled mother was tired of picking up after him. It had gotten somewhat better after he’d joined the army and taking care of himself suddenly wasn’t just a priority but a necessity too. The habits had stayed with him even after he was discharged, his wound still raw and stinging from that bullet that had decided to make his shoulder his new home. He’d torn the stitches once, too stubborn to listen to his doctors even then.

He stayed in Canada for a while after that with no place to stay and no home to go to. All his belongings had been stuffed into a bag strapped across his back that he used as a pillow, sometimes if he couldn’t find a more suitable place to stay. While he was there he’d saved one man’s life and ended many others. This, as he’d so often think later, was the start of something he’d swore he’d left behind a long time ago. This was long before the first Angel fell and when things were somewhat normal in the world except for Otabek who had to attend two funerals three months before and still felt like he was living in a haze. The pain had eased somewhat over time but if he thought about it- which he did often enough already to warrant impromptu visits to the doctor’s office for chest pains- it still didn’t feel real. He and grief were not good friends at all and so through a series of trials and errors he’d learned to ignore it. He’d saved up enough after working his ass off at some small jobs he’d managed to get and eventually got his own place.He had rebuilt his life almost from scratch, that emptiness following him around wherever he went. But, like all things in his life, it didn’t last and he’d had to leave it all behind eventually.

Russia had not been a welcoming place. He’d been there years before in his youth, before he was eighteen and even then it had been a cold and faraway place. He’d changed his dollars for rubles in the airport which wasn’t really much to begin with but at least it was something for him to get by on and start over. He’d had his connections still, numbers that he’d saved up years before that now rested on yellowed and crumbled pieces of paper that he was surprised he still had.

Otabek wasn’t a man of faith but he’d prayed fervently that grey and cloudy morning, standing by a gum and graffiti covered phone in the middle of Saint Petersburg- the only place he had thought of to go just because it was familiar to him. The phone rung three times before a woman with a sweet voice picked up. The number was to a local pool hall in a sketchy part of the city complete with flickering neon signs and sketchy deals that had nothing at all to do with pool but which everyone turned a blind eye to anyway. Otabek +asks for Yakov and the woman promptly tells him that there is no one there by that name nor had there ever been. He sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, something that he did when he was agitated or not getting his way. Nothing was ever easy.

“Tell him Otabek is calling and that he owes me a favor.”

Yakov Feltsman is a man who is perpetually stressed and gets angry easily and over the smallest of things. It must be why, at the age of fifty-six, he’s already almost bald except for the few strands at the back that he keeps long. Otabek hasn’t asked why and he thinks that if he did Yakov wouldn’t tell him anyway but he comes to the easy conclusion that it must remind him of his youth, somehow. He hadn’t changed a lot in the years since Otabek last saw him save for the fact that he’d aged somewhat but even his frown was exactly the same as it was back then.

He was a dangerous man, the first Otabek had ever known. Maybe not as dangerous as Alexei as Otabek would come to find quickly, but he still had that sharp gaze about him that would make most men shake when they stood in front of him. He was a money launderer by trade and a thief for life. He ran most of the pool halls in the city, not ambitious enough to stretch out and grow an empire of sorts over the country. It’s not that he couldn’t but this had always been a simple matter of want. Yakov wasn’t as ambitious as some of the other men Otabek knew. The pool halls provided a substantial sum of money for him, enough for a large house and everything he could ever need.

Yakov agreed to meet him that same day, out by the abandoned train tracks west of the city where they were sure not to be bothered by anyone. Weaving in between the rusted and immobile box cars Otabek spots Yakov easily. His hair is grey, almost white, and the bald patch on top is shiny. He’s wearing a long, black trench coat, his hands stuffed into the pockets, and his gaze is off somewhere but he isn’t really looking at anything. He doesn’t notice Otabek approach him but he’s not startled by his sudden presence either. They’d been friends, had been on good terms when Otabek left and even if there hadn’t been much communication between them after his departure and the years that followed it didn’t feel like coming back to a stranger. They talked there, standing between two cars in the quiet chill of the day. The important stuff is moved out of the way then. Yakov doesn’t say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” like most would and Otabek could never put into words how much he appreciated that.

They go to a bar after everything important has been said and all that remains is to talk business. Yakov says alcohol eases the soul and loosens the mouth. Otabek thinks he’s right. It was one of the reasons he was there in the first place. One could only survive so long on a few rubles that was barely enough for him to get a full meal, much less pay the measly sum of his motel for the night.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Yakov tells him simply, taking a small sip of his drink. There’s a strong smell there of alcohol and smoke and the unmistakable scent of bad B.O. The place is sketchy enough. Otabek keeps a discreet hand over the pistol tucked into his belt not because he doesn’t trust Yakov but because he doesn’t trust any of the other men there. He’d learned his lesson, now was no time to start making mistakes again.

It goes fairly well. He’d made a name for himself, back then. Now he was the stranger in the village, the one no one could trust because they didn’t know him.

“It won’t be easy, Otabek. You’ll have to start from the bottom.” Just like he’s been doing for awhile now. It’s nothing new; Otabek’s been a runner before. He would even go as far as to say that he’s somewhat good at it. It’s an easy job but also one of the worst. He knows that if you walk into a jail it won’t be the drug lords and mercenaries one would see in the cells- though they ended up in Maximum security, anyway. It’s always the runners. He takes what he can get anyway because it’s easier than having nothing at all.

It took him a while to get reacquainted with the city. Saint Petersburg was like an old lover who he had once worshipped in the late, dark night almost revarantly. But now that he’s back a second time he knows she won’t be so forgiving and second chances wouldn’t come his way easily. She was beautiful, all flashing neon and dark lit alleys that remind him of his youth. It smells painfully like the city, like crime and gunpowder and everything Otabek has ever known for so long that it’s impossible not to think of it as home.  
  
Otabek had learned quickly enough to make a name for himself. There were some, of course, that already knew him but loyalties had shifted over the years and so he had to adapt to this new world and remain silent about the old one lest someone brand him a traitor and decide a bullet would look pretty between his eyes. The running was easy enough- take the drugs, deliver them, receive the money. It allowed him to get to know the city again.

And if he charged a little extra, took a little of the product when backs were turned to him so he could sell them on the side… well, no one ever needed to know about that. Desperate times, after all, called for desperate measures.

Moscow had been harsh and cold, a city made up of depravity and darkness. If he’d thought Saint Petersburg had been unwelcoming then Moscow was even more so and he’d always felt a sort of reluctance with being there. Outwardly Otabek was fine. He was the epitome of cool and collected as was required of him but inside he ached to go back to the home he had built in Saint Petersburg even if it had only lasted a few years. Yakov had seen him off with one of his rare smiles and a generous amount of money to get him by. A warning to be careful had also been there, though silently in the form of a handshake and a weary look.

Those first few years in Russia Otabek spent them moving around. While he was in Saint Petersburg he’d had Yakov. In Moscow he had nobody and nothing but promises. The first time he’d met Alexei Otabek had foolishly thought himself better than him in every sense of the word. He was tall, harsh, imposing but Otabek’s first impression had been that of a rich boy who had spent his whole life pampered and cared for. He looked like, for lack of a better description, a man who had never killed anyone.

Of course Otabek had been wrong like he had been about many things before that. Alexei liked to tests his men’s loyalty to him in ways so subtle one barely even noticed he was doing it unless they knew him well. The first time was always the worst.

Alexei had never been to Otabek what Yakov had been. He’d never been a friend or even an acquaintance. To Otabek he was just his boss and nothing more. However, Otabek had come to know the man well in the time that he had spent working for him and so that day when Alexei calls him to his office and offers a drink he knows it can’t be anything good.

“I’m no babysitter,” he tells Alexei, placing his drink down on the coffee table without even taking a sip. It’s a natural enough response to what he’s just been offered and the only thing he can think of to say. Alexei isn’t mad or even a little put off by the outburst. He just smiled and that in itself was worse than any other reaction he could have had. For a second he thinks he’s being tested again. All those years working for him and still Alexei refuses to take his loyalty for granted. He’s never been good at trusting people anyway.

“You’re the man I trust most,” he says, voice sickly sweet like that of a lover making promises they never intended to keep. Otabek knows not for the first time that he’s not being given an option. Alexei is not the type of man to do that. He can either say yes or take a bullet wherever Alexei decided to give it to him later.

Mila’s words from earlier come to him then. Alexei got himself a new pet. He’d heard the other men talking. Before Alexei had called him up to his office he’d heard one man say how badly he wanted to get his cock wet in that sweet ass. It was, for lack of a better word, disgusting. Otabek knows he’s not a good man. All of the things he’s done warranted that but he’d always considered rape well below him. He then crazily thinks if not me, then who?

“He’s a bit of a handful,” Alexei continues as if Otabek has already agreed. And he might as well have. “But I’m not expecting you to be his damn friend. Just keep an eye out. Make sure the other guys don’t fucking touch him.”

No trust, Otabek thinks. Everyone there was loyal to Alexei but Alexei was loyal to no one. It showed in the way he handled his business, in the way he did all of the important work himself instead of relegating it off to someone else. At the top of the mafia food chain Alexei was an apex predator, Otabek was nothing, and that was just the way things were. Otabek had learned long ago to just accept it and move on. There was no reason to dwell on things that could not be changed. His mother had taught him that.

“You’re going to fuck him, aren’t you?” Otabek says, hands curling slightly where they rest on his thighs. He can’t stop thinking about Mila, what she’d say if she were there. That disgust on her face had been plain enough that morning when he’d seen her. He needed to know.

Alexei is straightforward, “I am. With a pretty thing like that who wouldn’t.” Otabek feels nothing but revulsion, bile rising up in his throat like he’s going to throw up. He hopes he doesn’t, at least not in front of Alexei. “But we talked about it. I’ve shown him the contract that he’ll sign later once he’s… calmed down, you see.” From his desk Alexei pulls a small stack of papers and waves them around in front of Otabek’s face. He doesn’t let him see them up close but Otabek takes his word for it anyway.That, for some reason, makes it somewhat better to him. “It’s better to have them willing. And,” he adds, that horrid smile on his face only growing wider. Otabek shivers, wanting nothing more than to get out of there. “If you do a good enough job maybe I’ll let you fuck him too.” He says it so casually, like Otabek should be on his knees thanking him for this generosity of his.

“Oh,” is the only thing he can manage to say.

It was pointless, but in the end he’d given a verbal affirmation anyway if only to see the pleased look in Alexei’s eyes. The job as easy enough to do, less boring than what he’d been doing before and this meant that he’d no longer have to accompany Alexei on his business trips. Out of all those that worked for him he always chose Otabek out of the willing and eager. Still, he knows he must be careful. The feeling of being tested lingered and even if he were out of Alexei’s sights he feels watched, like there’s a harsh set of eyes burning holes into the back of his head just waiting for him to make a mistake.

It should have been, for all intents and purposes, the easiest job Otabek’s ever had. He expected a whiny and annoying brat. He expected someone spoiled. He had anticipated the stubborn silence, in a way, but had never imagined this small and pathetic thing curled up in the middle of such a big bed before him. He looked so frail but Otabek knew just from the look in his eyes that if he had the chance he’d kill him along with everyone else in that house. Otabek thought that maybe it wasn’t a matter of if but rather a matter of when.

He feels a tight ache in his chest. Not of want, not but even if the Angel’s eyes are harsh and cold and limp like the crooked wing on his back Otabek still feels a harsh, hot ball of protectiveness swirl deep in the pit of his gut. It’s suddenness startles him. Looking at the mess of blond hair he feels like this is the only thing he can do even if it isn’t quite right. Crazily he imagines if it were someone else in his place, someone else that Alexei had propositioned with taking care of his new pet like this. With all the talk he’d hard around the house it’d be hard to imagine someone else being able to keep their hands to themselves around him. Maybe Alexei knew him better than he thought.

-

It takes Mila a rather long time to go up those stairs. She’d been there all morning and had barely slept the night before even after that guy had fucked her and she’d been exhausted beyond belief when he was done. She’d gone home sticky and unsatisfied like always and had only managed a bath when she got home before falling to her bed, unable to sleep for seemingly endless hours.

Her heart had leapt almost to her throat when Alexei had called Otabek to his office that morning. She’d been there once and knew from experience how unsettling it was even if she’d spent most of her time sucking Alexei’s cock under the desk as he went about his business. She didn’t need to be there to see the large mahogany desk and the large windows behind it. Alexei kept a small collection of alcohol in there and she was sure that right at that moment he was giving Otabek a small sip of his expensive brandy. It was a taunt, of sorts, a way to loosen him up. Take this and do what I want. Alexei was a real sweet talker. The best of all Mila knew.

After, Otabek had come out of the office a little hazy. He hadn’t had any of that damn brandy. Mila doesn’t ask but she can’t smell it on his breath when he pulls her to the side and tells her what just happened. Otabek always tells her everything. They’ve always had.

She feels… not relief, exactly but something close to it. All the years of knowing him she knows she can trust him. He’s a good man that’s had to do some bad things to get by but out of all the others there he was the best. If it’s Otabek looking after the Angel then she can breathe easy. Or, rather, easier than she would have if it had been anyone else.

He’d looked nervous. That sudden shift in his routine must have really thrown him off his rocker and he suddenly looked younger than ever in that moment. Mila placed a comforting hand on his shoulder that she thinks must not really do much but Otabek smiles at her anyway and it’s enough for that moment.

“Come up with me,” he says after a moment of staring down the stairs and building up the courage to go up. He must not want to go. Mila can see his reluctance bright as day but she’s bad in the way of comforting others. And, if she’s being honest with herself, she doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t want to see him in whatever way they’re keeping him. He’d thrown a fit, she’d heard. Had struggled and kicked and caused a scene that had taken six of their strongest men to subdue and even then he’d still tried. He must be a sight, as of now.

“Vadim asked to see me,” she says, which isn’t a lie but she feels bad anyway for making him do this alone. She just wasn’t ready to see it. To see him.

So Otabek goes alone and Mila goes to Vadim, who greets her with all the enthusiasm of a man about to empty his balls down a pretty girl’s throat. He has a thing for cash, for flaunting his wealth even if he doesn’t have that much of it in the first place. Mila gets down on her knees in front of him and he slaps her with a wad of hundred-dollar bills before she starts unbuttoning his pants. She doesn’t particularly enjoy that- in fact she hates it, hates him- but it gets him hard as a fucking rock. It’s easy to finish him off then. Six minutes. She starts the timer in her head.

Once he’d covered his bed in bills and fucked her on top of it. It wasn’t pleasant and she’d ended up with more than one papercut in places papercuts have no business being. But the amount he’d paid her after was more orgasmic than his cock had ever been.

That day he’s particularly rough with her. He grabs her hair, slaps her cheek. He doesn’t even give her a warning other than a thumb against her lower lip before he’s pushing his cock into her mouth. She’s done this enough now to know to just leave her jaw slack and let him take what he wants from her. She’s careful with the teeth and only looks at him when he tells her to, eyes wide and brimming with tears. He tucks bills into her shirt, her bra, and right in between her tits. He pushes into her mouth and almost makes her gag. All the while Mila can’t wait to get the fuck out of there.

He comes loads. It takes him six minutes just like she knew it would. It’s salty, bitter and thick as she swallows it all just how he likes. She has mouthwash in her bag that she can’t wait to use to chase away the awful taste. When he pays her what she’s due she hauls ass out of there as quickly as she can and doesn’t say a single word to him.

It wasn’t as embarrassing for her as it had been the first time she’d sold her body out to the highest bidder. She doesn’t care, as she walks through the house, that everyone knows what she’s just done. She doesn’t care that they can probably see it in her puffy lips or messy hair.

She’d been fifteen that first time. Desperate for anything but still with that spark in her eye that wouldn’t die down for a long while. She hadn’t started with Alexei, that would come years later. In the beginning she was the only person she had.

There was very little comfort in her line of work. She hated it; it hurt, they were always too rough when they pressed her face down into the scratchy motel mattresses, and she hated looking at the marks they left on her in the morning. She wasn’t even human to them. She’d learned quickly enough to let them think of her as they wanted. It just made things easier for all those involved and even if no one ever stayed behind long enough to comfort her when she inevitably started sobbing she always found a reason to keep going.

She was always careful with herself, with her body, and with her business. A pregnancy scare was nothing; STDS were harder to get rid of. It was a tough job and it was hard not to let it get to her sometimes but she managed. Otabek always said she was a strong girl. It was hard to believe him at times.

They’d met when she was freshly nineteen and he’d just arrived in Moscow. He was a pretty boy with dark but soft eyes and gentle hands. There was a special event that night, Otabek was the new guy trying to make connections and though Mila had arrived with someone else she’d ended up with him, anyway just because he’d looked so lonely standing there in that suit that didn’t quite fit right. They’d danced and he’d asked every time before touching her. It was the nicest anyone had ever been to her and so it was easy to let him take her to bed after.

It was obvious that he’d just moved in. His small apartment was littered with cardboard boxes half unpacked. Some where empty and he’d just never gotten around to throwing them out. The only place that was neat and organized was his room. It was light on the furniture but the bed was big and spacious enough. It was so soft she sunk right into it.

In the end, however, they didn’t fuck. Otabek kissed her, his lips a little chapped but the hands on her hips gentle as ever as he dragged her forward and closer to him. But it was like he couldn’t go beyond that, like he couldn’t force his hands to move and touch Mila like so many had done before him. It was like he was scared right then of this girl on his bed. She could see it in his eyes when she pulled back from his lips to look at him, her hands already at the edges of her dress ready to pull it up over her head just to get the night moving on. Ready to expose herself to him. Maybe if she’d thought about it, really thought about it, she would have seen that it wasn’t fear of her she saw in his eyes but something else entirely. Something that scared him beyond belief. Something that made his reluctance to touch her clear enough. She dropped the dress, instead, let the fabric ripple back over her thighs. She’d never lasted that long before with her clothes still on.

“It’s okay,” she tells him and leans down to kiss him again, this time on the cheek. It’s a soft touch and he breathes out a sigh as if he’s relieved at this small mercy of hers. “You’re okay.”

He offers to let her spend the night. “I’ll sleep on the couch, if you want,” he tells her, gracefully offering up his soft bed. Mila declines. It was turning out to be a strange night. Mila wasn’t going to spend it there but she didn’t think it right to just pick up and leave Otabek there by himself either. He looked vulnerable enough.

“Come on,” she tells him instead, padding across his room barefoot. She stops at the door, hand on the knob. “Let’s have a drink together. You look like you have some stories to share and I feel like listening.”

Otabek had looked a bit startled by her offer, to say the least. He had expected her to leave right away and so he stayed on his bed for a long moment processing her words. A drink. Of course. He gets up and finds Mila rummaging through his mostly empty cupboards.

“Where do you keep your liquor? What kind of Russian doesn’t have liquor?” It was more a thought voiced out loud rather than a reprimand.

Otabek quietly tells her that he’s not. Russian, that is. “I’m from Kazakhstan.”

She stops and turns back to look at him. It’s the first time he’d voiced that out loud in a long while. Almaty was years away, a distant memory full of good times that hurt to revisit. She doesn’t say anything except for a small “aha!” moments later when she finally finds his small collection of alcohol under the sink.

“Smirnoff for the soul,” she says, smiling as she cradles the bottle in her hands and shows it off proudly to Otabek. “And you have orange juice. Great.“

Otabek has never had a Screwdriver. He doesn’t tell Mila this as she expertly prepares their drinks for fear of ridicule. He’s not a big drinker, either, so when Mila hands him his drink, sits on the cold tiled floor of his kitchen and motions for him to do the same he’s more than a little put off by the sudden friendliness of that simple action. He does it anyway mostly because he’s been doing everything Mila has asked of him that night and doesn’t see a point of stopping then. She smells sweet, it’s something that he hadn’t noticed before.

Their knees press together. Mila swallows nearly half of her drink in one big gulp and Otabek is more than a little astounded by that. The drink itself doesn’t taste bad but he takes small sips anyway just so he doesn’t get too buzzed too soon. The nights are always long, Mila tells him. It’s alright to take is slow.

“So. Kazakhstan.” She stretches her legs out in front of her and crossed them at the ankles. Otabek nods, rim of the cup pressed against his lower lip. He can smell the vodka, so strong it stings his nose.

He nods. So. Kazakhstan. It’s an easy way of getting him to speak. He could go on about Kazakhstan for hours.

“Almaty,” he tells her. He remembers it well; the Ascension Cathedral, Panfilov square, Abay Opera House. “My mother wanted me to go to the Kazakh-British Technical university.”

“You didn’t.” It’s not a question.

Otabek shakes his head, anyway. He didn’t. “She also wanted me to marry a nice girl and have five kids. At least.” He doesn’t know why he’s telling her all of this.

“You didn’t do that either.”

“I never told her-” this is the part that makes him choke up, that makes him feel like there’s a big lump in his throat and that he’ll honest to God choke. He’d never said it out loud save in the privacy of his own room, late into the night when he was sure no one would burst in suddenly. Telling his own reflection was hard enough, the whisperings of I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay stinging his ears. Like a curse, he thinks. Like something bad that should never leave his mouth. He couldn’t stand having to say it aloud. He hated it, had hated it for so long, wished he could rip that part of him out until there was nothing but a big gapping hole in his chest- until he was normal like the rest.

Foolishly, he’d thought he could get rid of it. Maybe by taking Mila home, maybe by simply denying himself what he sought out most. He didn’t know. He should have felt something when he was with her. When they were kissing, when she pressed up against him dancing, when he had pressed her against the softness of his mattress but there was nothing there. He didn’t want her, like that.

Mila reaches over and grabs his hand, hers wet and cold from the condensation that had gathered in her cup. It’s a small gesture from someone who might as well be a total stranger to him but it’s comforting, in a way. Otabek takes what he can get.

“You’re okay,” she tells him for the second time that night. She squeezes his hand, let’s him continue at his own pace. He tells her all he can about Almaty and then Russia and Canada, in that order. He barely speaks of his family and she doesn’t ask him to. He tells her, despite the fear of driving her away, about all of the things he’s had to do and then later he’ll tell her about all of the things he’s done since.

Mila passes a gentle hand through his hair. She doesn’t think he’s a bad man, just a victim of circumstance. They both are, though in different ways. Maybe that’s what makes their friendship come so easy.

That night they get drunk together. It’s almost five in the morning when Otabek rests his head against her shoulder. “You should see it,” he says and raises his hands up as if trying to paint a picture with eager fingers, willing her to see what he is. “From the hills of the Kok Tobe. It’s wonderful, you can see the whole city from there. It lights up at night.”

They’d moved on from the Screwdriver after three glasses because Mila was tired of standing from her spot and preparing it. They simply turned to the bottle instead, both of them drunk enough already to not notice the sting as the pure Vodka went down their throats and settled warmy in their stomachs. They passed it back and forth until it was empty and then they laughed about it as if the bottle still clutched in Mila’s hand is the funniest thing in the world.

“What about you?” Otabek asks once the laughter has died down.

“Me?” And she presses her hand against her chest as if he could have possibly been talking to anyone else but her.

“Yeah. You.” His words are slightly slurred, still a little wobbly and giddy from his fits of laughter. He looks young in the dim light. “You know about me. Tell me about you.”

Right. Mila should have known this was a game of evens. She’s too drunk, however, to really put up much of a fight and her tongue is loose. So she speaks.

“I fuck men for a living,” she says. It’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Or, I let them fuck me. I just bite my tongue and bear it.”

Otabek grimaces at her words, at the way she says such a horrible thing so casually.

“I spent my whole life here. I’m probably going to die here, too. God-” She lets her head fall back against the cabinet behind her with a dull thud. Her eyes are far away as she thinks over her words. “- I’m really going to die here,” she repeats, voice shaking. And then she laughs. Soft, quiet. “I always wanted to be an ice skater.” She says it like it’s her biggest secret. Maybe it is. Maybe this is the one thing she’s been hiding inside of her for so long, unable to tell anyone because no one will listen. But Otabek… Otabek does. He listens with the most solemn look on his face like Mila’s dreams and aspirations actually mean something to him. “Or- or a ballerina. Something. I have the grace for it. I could do it.” She could.

That time it’s Otabek’s turn for comfort. He reaches out, tangles their fingers together and pulls her closer. There’s a warmth there. He’s too drunk to think about it.

“I know you like boys,” she says, feeling the way he stiffens under her. “It’s okay. I do too.” He laughs at this. He can’t help it; it’s all so ridiculous. He’s sitting there on the floor of his kitchen telling a prostitute his life story and in turn listening to her tell hers. “But between you and me, I prefer girls.”

“Really?”

Mila hums a confirmation. Otabek doesn’t know why but he feels a sudden sense of relief at this. He feels less alone.

Mila still remembers the first time she’d slept with a woman; she’d been seventeen, in a Hermes dress that had been popular two seasons ago, the fabric itchy on her skin. This was two years before she met Otabek and just one before Alexei noticed her. It was summer, the night hot and balmy, making the hairs that escaped her high ponytail stick to her neck with perspiration. She was out on the pier, a cigarette held awkwardly between her fingers. She was still getting used to the heavy, hot smoke and the way it made her tongue feel thick and her mouth dry. Just mere feet below her the sea lay dark and still in the night.

She’d been thinking about jumping in all night, ever since she got there, tripping over her shoes. She felt like a ghost. Even when people were there, walking past her aimlessly as she wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the impending chill no one had noticed her, stopped to talk to her, or even spared her a glance. She was nothing and she’d spent a good portion of her time there wondering, What if I jump? No one would miss me. It’d be so easy to do it, to let herself get lost in the inky darkness of the cold sea and get dragged out. Never to be seen again. She’d then pressed her hands against the smooth wooden railing and managed to tamp her thoughts down until she convinced herself they were nothing but a simple ideation of hers.

Elizabeta had been the first person she’d seen in hours. A woman of thirty-six, she was the true definition of grace, beauty, and power. She’d seen her before at the party just hours before but they hadn’t talked, instead choosing to linger in the background with the men they had arrived with. Mila, however, had noticed her. All the way across the room, over the bobbing heads of unnoticing strangers; Elizabeta was beautiful.

That night on the pier she stopped. Right there a mere three feet from Mila she stopped and turned slowly. She was alone, her heels clasped in her hands, and the hem of her dress bunched up in her hands. It was more expensive than Mila’s but she didn’t seem to care that it was getting wrinkled. Her blond hair danced around her face, her blue eyes shining in the low light provided by the streetlights above them. Mila turned too, trying not to be too obvious in the way her breath hitched. She pretended that it was intentional the way she dropped what remained of her cigarette.

Elizabeta didn’t say a word as she took three steps back, turned her entire body towards her, and pressed herself against the railing next to her. Mila could smell her perfume, the passion fruit scent of her hair. From then to the point where Mila was being pressed against a soft mattress was all a blur. She remembers them talking, remembers Elizabeta putting her soft hand over her own and how she’d thought I don’t like women. She remembers how wrong she’d been when Elizabeta tilted her chin up with delicate fingers and kissed her on the mouth so that her red lipstick smeared against Mila’s lips. She remembers being asked to go home with her and readily agreeing.

Mila wasn’t inexperienced with sex, not at that point in her life, but the way Elizabeta had touched her made her feel like a virgin all over again- wet between the legs and trembling all over. She’d never been touched like that, not the way Elizabeta did it like she was worth something, like her pleasure mattered too. It was one of the first times she’d come with a client, the first time she’d desperately cried out for more and prayed the night would never end.

Elizabeta was good to her, seemingly an expert at everything that was Mila’s body. She learned the right spots quickly, encouraged Mila to voice her likes and dislikes as she kissed her thighs and then lapped eagerly at her cunt like it was the best thing she’d ever tasted.

Mila saw Elizabeta four times. The fourth night, thighs still shaking from the violence of her orgasms, she left Elizabeta’s high-rise, uptown condo with a broken heart.

“She was married and had three kids,” Mila says, turning her face away from Otabek as her cheeks burned red from the memory of it. It’d been years already but she still couldn’t forget it. “I mean, she probably still is. I always assumed it was just about the money. Her husband was rich and all that. If i had that i wouldn’t want to lose it over a silly fling, either.”

“Fuck her,” Otabek said suddenly, voice loud from his drunkenness. “Fuck Elizabeth.” He says her name in English instead of Russian. Elizabeth. It sounded like a completely different person. Elizabeth. She didn’t want to think about the could-have-been’s anymore.

Mila admired his face in the quiet and solemn moments that pass between them when neither were talking and the earth stood still. His profile is sharp, his eyes hazy now from the alcohol but still soft. She hopes fervently that he never loses that. Later, she’ll sit between his legs sometimes and let him braid her hair. There he’ll tell her in the quietest, saddest voice how much she reminds him of his sister. Maybe that was another driving point; Otabek missed his family and Mila never had one. It was, perhaps, one of the best things that could have happened in the worst situation.

By the end of the night, after Otabek calls her a cab to take her home and graciously pays for it. He offers to pay for the sex they didn’t have, too. Mila’s never been shy about accepting money but for some reason she refuses this just as she’d refused to spend the night there. Otabek, the stubborn bastard, does it anyway. He must have done it while she was busy fumbling with her shoes and trying to get them on. She finds the neatly rolled up wad of cash in her purse when she gets home. She counts it and finds that it’s more than she would have made had they actually gone through with it.

Even years later she still thought of him as that lost and lonely boy from that party. They’d tried looking for something in all the wrong places. It was never meant to be, not the way they’d tried at first. There had been no soft spot in her heart for any man save for Otabek though neither of them had put up much of a fight anyway. It happened so naturally, so easy. She loved him in the same way that she knew he loved her too and that fierce protectiveness he felt for her made her feel safer than she ever had.

  
It’s grey and overcast that morning, making her feel gloomier than she had when she was with Vadim. Her cheek stings, her jaw is sore and already she feels like she's going to scream if anyone else asks to see her. She makes it to the Foyer once again and the stairs loom before her tall and imposing like an enemy. She knows she has no reason to go up there. Alexei hadn’t told her to and none of the men ever took her up there before. She knows she wouldn’t get in trouble either way- Alexei had always taken pride in showing off his things. What would a small peek do? It was harmless and Mila knew it. The problem was, like always, her. Mila Babicheva was too good at playing the role of a coward.

She does it anyway. It takes her a few minutes of deep breathing. It’s not so bad if she takes one step at a time and stops after every five to take a breath. Her hands are slicky with sweat against the wooden railing but she makes it. Deep in the pit of her gut is a tight ball of nerves that eases somewhat by the sight of Otabek outside of the door. His head is lowered, eyes cast down on his shoes and a deep frown on his face.

Mila’s sudden appearance seems to startle him. He jerks, head snapping up and eyes wide. It’s a comical sight; she almost laughs but manages to control herself.

“Everything alright?”

He nods but Mila can tell that it’s not. She points to the door.

“You mind?”

He shakes his head and even goes as far as to open the door for her. He doesn’t even ask why she’s there. It must be pretty obvious. She steps inside and the cool air from the room blasts her in the face. The Angel, she finds, is sitting up on the bed, knees drawn to his chest and his eyes attentive on the TV. He spares her a single glance before turning back to whatever it is that he’s watching.

He looks small curled up like that. Mila’s breath catches in her throat, her nerves growing. There are no visible bruises on him, no signs that he’s been beaten or abused recently. Still, she can’t help but look. It’s as if she needs yet another reason to be angry and upset with this wholly unfair situation.

“I hope you aren’t giving him a tough time,” she says, closing the door behind her and leaning her back against it. It clicks. “He’s a good man.”

Mila doesn’t know what she’s doing. Or rather, what she’s trying to do. Defend Otabek? Perhaps. Trying to make the Angel feel better about this whole situation? Maybe. It’s probably both, though.

It takes a moment. To Mila it feels like an eternity. When the Angel lets out a small sigh and straightens out his legs her breath hitches and then it’s like she can’t breathe at all. She hadn’t expected much of a reaction, hadn’t expected one at all, really. He looked strangely different from that night at the party. Softer, maybe. Not like he had given up entirely but like he had accepted his fate for the time being. His eyes were sharp, cunning, maybe a little hazy from the drugs but still there entirely as he studied her.

“You… are the woman from the party.”

She’d heard his voice once before at the party, when he’d called himself the Morning Star and right before Alexei slapped him for the disrespect. It was different, softer. Hesitant, like he’s scared to speak too loud and too fast. She hadn’t noticed before, but his Russian is impeccable, perfect, like he’d been speaking it his whole life and not just for a few days..

It’s not a question but rather a statement. Mila nods anyway and takes a step closer.

“I am. You remember me?”

He nods. It’s an easy bob of his head. He studies her carefully, as if trying to assess her character with a simple once over. Maybe he can. Mila’s not entire sure what the range of his abilities are. He seems to be glowing, though. Even with the collar and the drugs in his system he’s vibrantly beautiful, his skin outlined by a faint but noticeable aura of golden light. Angelic, she thinks a little dumbly.

“My name is Mila.” She doesn’t ask him for his name. He’s free to give it if he wishes, free to keep it if he doesn’t. Out of everything there his name was solely his and no one else’s. It was the one thing that could not be taken from him.

Without asking she takes a few quick steps across the room and sits herself on the mattress. She’s careful, watching his face for any signs of discomfort. She’d move away immediately if there was but the moments pass with the ticking of the clock on the wall and he remains impossibly solemn.

He watches her, too, green eyes following even the smallest of her movements. He’s careful, smart. He stays perfectly still, hands resting on his knees and slender fingers curled daintily.

After a moment of considerate silence, as if waiting for her to add something more to the simplicity of her statement he says, “My name is Uriel.”

Mila smiles at him. “Yuriel.” It’s quiet between them. She likes that he was trusted her with this, that he has given her his name when he had given it to no one else. “Does it hurt?” She points to his wrist, the skin there red and chaffed from rubbing against the harsh metal of the handcuffs. He shakes his head, seemingly unbothered by it.

“It’s fine.”

Around his neck the collar glinted under the low light. She felt jittery, fingers tapping odd rhythms on her thighs. Her eyes flit over to the closed balcony door and she asks, “do you mind?”

He must not really know what she’s talking about but he shakes his heady, anyway. No, he doesn’t mind so she goes and opens it, sighs softly at the feeling of the cool and fresh air that hits her face and the overheated skin of her neck and chest. There, far away from the city, it smelled different. It was cleaner, fresher. There was no smell of exhaust, none of the rumble of overworked engines. There is no one shouting under the windows, no risk of turning the corner and finding someone standing on their last leg begging for money so they can get something to forget about it for the night. There, it’s quiet, the air is fresh. From her back pocket Mila fishes out a single cigarette and lights it with her favorite Zippo lighter, the one Otabek had engraved for her- not with words, no, but rather with a simple and rather crude ice skate. It was a birthday gift and strangely one of the things Mila valued most.

The tip of the cigarette lights up a bright orange when she presses the flame against it. The smoke that leaves her mouth when she exhales is as grey as the clouds in the sky. She can see Uriel from there, still sitting quiet and still on the bed, his head turned back so he can look at her as she smokes. She smiles at him, cigarette held between her fingers, but he doesn’t smile back. He just watches her, emotionless.

“I was born here,” she says, falling into a simple pattern of inhale-exhale-talk-repeat. “Well, in Russia. But Samara was where I lived for a while. In the Volzhsky district.”

“Your home.”

Mila shakes her head. “No. My home is here,” and she taps her heel against the marble of the balcony as if to emphasize her point. Uriel nods and looks away from her. She wonders if he knows that she’s lying, if he knows that she doesn’t have a home anywhere save for those late nights she spends with Otabek and everything seems so normal.

“I have no home anymore.” He says it matter of fact.

Mila puts out her cigarette, lets it fall over the balcony railing, and steps inside of the room again, closing the balcony door carefully behind her.

“Maybe not right now,” she says finding no point in beating around the bush, “ but I promise I’ll try to take care of you. And Beka, too though you probably don’t trust him now, right?” She’s not sure why she’s speaking for Otabek. That day she’s not sure about a lot of things.

Mila takes the ensuing silence as the period at the end of a long sentence. She goes to take her leave but stops when he takes her hand and pulls slightly.

“What you said that day at the party about…” he stops, takes a deep breath. “About how smiling would make it easier.” He lifts his head up, looks at her with the intensity of someone that has seen too much already. “Is it ever easy?”

At a loss for words Mila instead reaches out and brushes a gentle knuckle against his cheek. He seems unsure about the touch but doesn’t flinch away.

“Remember. I’m always here.” Maybe it hadn’t been the answer he was looking for but it was the best she could give.

After that, there is nothing else to say. She moves to the door, opens it, and takes a step back in surprise when Otabek stumbles through and nearly falls flat on his face. His cheeks burn red and he looks at her with his eyes wide and full of all the guiltiness of a child that has just been caught eavesdropping. His gaze then moves from her to the Angel and he looks like he’s about to say something- something that will probably be stupid but she grabs his hand just in time and drags him out of the room.

“You,” she says, turning to him once the door has clicked shut and pressing the tip of a carefully painted nail against his chest. She’s nearly shaking, her voice low so the Angel doesn’t hear her. “You take care of him, yeah? You’re in charge now so you take care of him.”

All Otabek can do is nod. He’s not in the business of lying to Mila, not when she looks so distraught and helpless over something that cannot be stopped but it’s the only thing he can think of to do. He knows what comes next, after this, he knows what Alexei will do. He’s seen it happen before. He wonders if he’ll have to stand there by the door as Alexei takes his fill of what is his. Maybe not. Maybe he’ll be dismissed and he’ll go do something else while he pretends that nothing is happening in that room.

It’s not like there’s anything he could do about it; they are all at Alexei’s mercy, after all.


	3. Cherubim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for graphic depictions of rape

His name is Uriel. Meaning: God is my light. Meaning: I was somebody, once. There, he is nothing. 

Standing before the full body mirror his captors have so graciously placed in his room he can see his body, this physical form he was cursed with when he fell. It’s strange, restrictive. In the silence and darkness of the night he’d taken off his clothing, had let it fall in a heap on the floor, just so he could take a proper look for the first time. He’d pinched his arm until a redness bloomed on his skin and he gasped at the sudden stinging pain the action procured. It wasn’t entirely unfamiliar but still new. He felt the smooth skin of his chest, the small rosebud bumps that were his nipples. He felt the dip in his stomach where his belly button was as if he had been birthed by a human woman. 

The thought makes him shiver in disgust. 

He had been created, not birthed. On the first day of creation, cradled in the cosmos that was his Father, he had come into being. He was the child of stardust and Holy fire. Before the world, before time, before there was even a before or an after, light and darkness. He was there when there was nothing, had witnessed the creation, the fall, the waste the humans his Father had created with so much love and in his own image cast across the world. It had just been his Father, before, and those that worshipped him so reverently and promised to do so until the end of time. It had been his Father after, too, until he wasn’t anymore.

He’d seen the rise and fall of empires, numerous wars, lifetimes end in the blink of an eye and impossible feats be accomplished. He’d seen the birth and rebirth of the entire human race but now- now he’s standing there shivering with a golden collar around his neck as if he were a slave, his wing crooked and hurting and feeling impossibly, miserably weak. 

He didn’t like Humans. Or, he did once before but that was no longer the case. It was fine for the first millennia or so when there was just two of them in the Paradise his father had created. But then they got greedy, they ruined everything, destroyed the world and it’s original beauties. Despite what his Father had said, despite the words of compassion he shared, how it wasn’t their fault, that they had been tempted and misguided, he only felt disgust when he looked at them. They all deserved to be smited with a flaming sword, he thought, to be made to suffer like they had made his Father suffer. It just wasn’t right, he thought, to let them go on living how they were. 

When the war started it was easy for him to pick sides. He knew what was right. His fall to earth only founded this truth. 

It had been five days and fifteen hours. He’d been keeping track meticulously. On the fourth day his captor had deemed him well behaved enough and finally uncuffed him. His legs had shaken the first time he stood after so long and he almost collapsed onto a heap on the floor much to the wry amusement of those watching. He felt like a zoo exhibit, something to be gawked at but not touched. The women that bring him his food to his room- a different one every time- barely look at him and those that do show nothing but fear and uncertainty in their gaze, maybe a little bit of quiet awe that only lasts as long as their time with him does. He wasn’t sure if he preferred it that way or not. The loneliness felt like it was eating at him day by day, hour by hour, second by second.

And the food- he couldn’t stand it. The textures were strange, the flavors overwhelming. He had never needed to eat before but if he refused then he felt weaker than ever; his legs shook, his head began to pound and his stomach would growl so he had to fall somewhere in the middle. His body was useless. He’d eat enough to get by but not enough that his stomach became uncomfortably full. It was inconvenient- he was hungry again just hours later. He’d had no one to ask for more and so he’d had to wait alone in his room until one of the women brought his tray up. 

The man they’d stationed outside of his door- Otabek, was his name though Mila called him Beka sometimes- had taught him how to turn on the TV and how to work the control remote. He was incessantly noisy and annoying, trying to talk to him through the room’s door despite the continued steely silence and lack of words between them. He insisted on calling him  _ Yuri _ , a shortening of his own name that sounded more Russian and was easier on the tongue than Uriel was. 

Yuri. 

He wouldn’t admit it, but he liked it. He liked the way it sounded, the way the lack of those last syllables suddenly made him feel like a completely different person, an entity separate from God entirely. He was Yuri when he had once been Uriel. He was godless where he had once been Holy. God had failed him and now it was just him in this strange house and equally as strange world. 

After a few days, despite his obvious dislike for the man that had called him this, he decided to take on this name. His name is Yuri, now. The man standing in front of the mirror with the slender body and yellow hair- that is Yuri. That is him. 

He had taken to pacing back and forth in his room for lack of anything better to do. If he’d had to sit on that bed for another day he thinks he would have gone insane. He walks out into the balcony, the door of which they keep unlocked, walks aimlessly around his bed. He paces while he watches TV, flipping from one show to another and then another.

It was sometime in the fall. September, maybe. Perhaps October. The leaves were changing color already, from vibrant greens to yellows to oranges before falling off completely down to the garden where one disgruntled man would always rake them up into a pile before stuffing them into black plastic bags. He’d be back again to do it the next day and again the next until the trees were completely bare and there were no more leaves to collect. 

It was nothing new. He’d seen millions and millions of seasons come and go but it was completely different to be there while it happened. He could feel the chill, his skin completely sensitive against the changing weather. He’d start shivering if he stood out there for too long, his clothing not made for the temperature. His cheeks would turn red, as if he were blushing and he’d have to rush back inside into the safety of the bedroom. It made him feel painfully human. 

There were bruises on his arms on his legs. They were rough with him, not caring if they grabbed him too harshly or pulled his hair too hard while they brushed out the knots that formed while he tossed and turned in his sleep. He’d gotten somewhat used to this routine. Each night before his dinner someone would show up with a towel and body wash that smelled of coconut. They made him undress and step into the scalding water that had been poured into the tub that wasn’t even big enough to fit both him  _ and _ his wings. When they started washing him he wished they’d let him do that part on his own. He wasn’t completely incompetent. There was no science to washing oneself but as much as he asked to be let alone they wouldn’t- couldn’t because they’d been ordered to wash him and what was said in that house was law. He hated how they touched him in places he had yet to even touch himself.

At least, in what must be a small act of mercy, they let him dress himself. He doesn’t know who does it, but every time after his bath there are clothes laid out for him on his bed. It’s always the same- a loose shirt with slits on the back for his wings, tight black shorts and no underwear. They don’t offer him shoes, either, probably because they don’t expect him to go anywhere. The floor is cold under his feet.

Sometimes the woman, Mila, went up to see him. She wasn’t so bad, not the worst in that house and definitely better than Otabek. She was the only one that had bothered to speak to him that night at the party and every night after that though she did it at his pace instead of her own. She allowed him time to gather his words and say them instead of staying outside of his room like a coward, mumbling about this or that as if he cared about any of it. 

She had kind eyes, despite all of the lewd things some of the men said about her. Like she was a slab of meat and they couldn’t wait to get their hands on her. She seems to like Otabek too and Yuri, in turn, feels like he must, if only for her. At the very most, he tolerates him and has yet to snap at him and tell him to be quiet, for once. 

He likes Mila, likes the gentleness that surrounds her but also the way her laugh is so big and loud. She smelled of cigarettes but also her own perfume, a dull sweetness that he had slowly familiarized himself with over the days he was held captive. She’d sit with him on the bed, her legs tucked under her. They’d become friendly with the silence that followed as she patiently waited for Yuri to gather his words and speak. If he had nothing to say then she’d speak first, tell him about her day, about the house. About Otabek. Maybe she can sense the dislike that has grown there and is trying to ease some of the tension. Yuri doesn’t hate her for it. 

Despite all of the comfort she tried to bring him there was very little he could actually find in that cold and sterile place. 

“You look like you haven’t been eating well,” she says one day, a strange smile on her face. Yuri tells her about the strange foods, how he eats just enough but just hours later he’s hungry again. He doesn’t know if, after she leaves, she tells Otabek this, or if he’d simply been snooping with his ear pressed against the door again, because after that day he makes it a point to show up in his room after his meals, arms heavy with snacks. Maybe it’s supposed to be a peace offering but Otabek doesn’t say a word to him then, like not having the door there acting as a barrier between them suddenly leaves him speechless.

The man’s name is Alexei. Most of the people there call him boss, even Otabek but to Yuri he seems like nothing more than a Demon, something so vile and disgusting it deserves to be in the deepest, darkest pits of hell. He’s tall, intimidating, but every time he sees him Yuri still stands up to him with an air of defiance about him that he refuses to have beaten out of him. His hands are rough, big. Sometimes he looks at Yuri like he wants to swallow him whole. 

Like he was waiting for Yuri to let him. 

Yuri barely saw him most days. He was a busy man, after all, but sometimes he would wake up from a fitful sleep to find Alexei in his room, sitting in the chair by his bed. He was nothing but a dark shadow, maybe outlined silver by the moonlight but he could always feel his eyes on him. The dark, heavy, suffocating energy around him was a heavy weight that would not give him peace. Neither of them say a word in those moments. At night Otabek has already gone home and if Yuri were to make a noise anyone who did hear him would pretend not to. There was no escaping Alexei. 

But, he thinks, relief filling him, he has yet to touch him. He looks like he wants to, sometimes. It's something big and fierce and disgusting that leaves Yuri’s skin crawling. He hadn’t noticed it, that first night, the way Alexei’s hand had rested on his own thigh, the way it had moved in so slowly over the bulge in his pants, the noises he had made. There was no way of denying it after. 

Yuri was no stranger to sex though he had never experienced it himself. He understood the basic concept but what he didn’t understand was the appeal of it, why humans enjoyed it so much. It was only supposed to be a simple means of  procreation and nothing more but humans, like everything else, managed to turn it into a business. He knew about Mila and somehow, he suspected this involved Otabek, too. They looked like lovers, sometimes. He didn’t ask them about it. 

It was Alexei who he was most worried about. 

Otabek was there, most of the time, standing out by the door. He didn’t come into the room unless it was completely necessary and if he did he would knock first, wait a second, and then open the door slowly, giving Yuri time to deny his request for entrance if he wanted to. 

He hid a gun under his jacket. Yuri had never seen it but he knew it was there. All of Alexei’s men had them and some of them would show it to him like a threat if they came into his room and he didn’t let them touch his legs, his thighs, his wings. It doesn’t scare him or it shouldn’t have but he can’t deny the way his heart speeds up and his hands start to sweat like this human body knows how terrible this simple thing can be. 

Otabek has never done any of that to him. He doesn’t touch, he doesn’t look the wrong way, he doesn’t place his hand over the butt of his gun and smile wide and mean as if knowing that Yuri has no choice in this. Otabek does none of those things but Yuri can’t help holding him at the same distance and with the same wariness as the other men. Anyone who works for Alexei can’t really be all that good. 

It must all be an act, Yuri figures. He comes to this conclusion rather easily one day after Otabek comes and goes after his dinner and leaves a pile of sweets and other snacks on his bed. He must be working towards something, must be doing all of this just so he can get his hands on Yuri without all of the fuss and fight all of the other guys have been putting up with. It’s not going to happen, Yuri thinks quietly. It’s just not. He would rather die than let a human touch him like that or even touch him at all. 

He’s not staying in that house forever. Even if they have him under lock and key, constantly drugged and with armed men around at all times he’s already been planning a way out. It has, obviously, been very hard to do without a general idea of what what his prison looks like. He remembers the foyer, the large staircase. That first day they had moved him along with the others through the back doors, through the kitchens, and out into the open where they had been gawked at and those that had once been his brothers and sisters were taken away from him. He doubted he would ever see them again. But that wasn’t what he had to worry about now. It was just him and he had to get out of there. 

Otabek was of no help. He talked about himself a lot but nothing of importance and nothing that could be of great help to Yuri. He could recount the man’s entire life by now, could tell anyone that asked about his time in Kazakhstan and Russia and Canada. He speaks of only the facts, though. He has a family, or he did. Yuri’s not sure because Otabek doesn’t seem to be either.  

_ I had a sister, _ he’d say one day and then,  _ I have a sister _ , the next. The sadness in his eyes, though, could never be denied. Yuri listened as attentively as he could hoping a detail might escape him, even just the smallest of things that could help build up his plan from a simple and small thing to something that could actually work to his advantage. 

He’d considered not just once about taking the leap from the balcony and down to the gardens but the room was two stories up and he was not yet sure how much distress his body could endure. He could make it, there was a chance of that. Perhaps he could escape not totally unscathed but with a few cuts and bruises but he doubts that would be enough to slow him down. There was also the chance that the fall could leave him incapacitated and with a broken bone or two. And then what? He doubts the punishment for trying to escape would be anything nice and that along with the pain of broken bones would be agonizing. 

And if he did manage to escape then where would he go? His clothes were thin and not at all suitable for the impending cold. He had no shoes, no money, no knowledge of the city, no one he could trust or who would be of any help. His wings would give him away in an instant. He didn’t want to think about it but there was no doubt that someone worse than Alexei would find him. 

No, the balcony was out of the question. It was just not an option. He knew he couldn’t do this alone so that left him with just one option. 

He uncurls his legs and stands on the cold floor, goosebumps rising up on his skin. The TV had become a dull hum in the background as his mind wandered off to thoughts of his grand escape and he hadn’t noticed that Otabek had been talking the entire time. 

“... and she went to look for him, right? I was maybe six or seven. I think that was the last time I saw my dad-“

He stops talking abruptly when Yuri opens the door and he stumbles into the room.   
Gotcha, Yuri thinks. He was pressed up against the door. He must have been listening in for something to use to his advantage. 

“What’s with you, asshole?”   
  
He says, feeling quite proud of himself for that. He’d heard the word a few hours before on the television. Otabek stares down at him, eyes wide, not as offended as Yuri had expected him to look. Yuri remembers that he’s supposed to play nice only after he says, “why do you only ever talk about yourself?” 

“I’m… sorry,” he says, voice slow. Is he stupid or something? He’s of no use to Yuri then if he is. “But,” he adds, “it’s not like you ever talk about yourself.” 

It’s a fair enough point. Yuri isn’t sure what to do after that. He’s not looking for a friendship with Otabek, simply a means to an end but he’ll do what he must to get what he can. Otabek was a strange enough man; he talked so much but still had a quiet disposition about him, eyes dark and heavy but not mean at all. His hair was dark, usually styled back but that day it was falling over his forehead in a dark flop as if he had been too tired that morning to style it. 

“It’s not like I have much to say.”

Otabek’s smile is crooked when he says, “I doubt that,” and his eyes linger just for a moment on Yuri’s wings.

Yuri spends the better part of a week testing Otabek. There is no loyalty there, at least not from Yuri’s part but for Otabek there must be something that Yuri can't see or understand. He does all that Yuri asks him as best as he can as if he were a puppet being guided by the strings that are Yuri’s words. He brings him extra food when he asks for it, more of the snacks that Yuri tells him he likes most. He even brought him shoes one time, a shiny pair of new-looking sneakers with tacky cheetah print on the sides and the laces. They were nice but Yuri has no need for them anyway and so they spend most of the time hidden under his bed, scared that someone will see them and take them away from him. It was easy. Maybe too much so.  The fragility that had built up during their moments together comes crashing down three weeks into Yuri’s imprisonment. The nightly routine with Alexei had persisted though Yuri had learned to turn over and ignore it. No one knew of this, he thought. Sometimes it would come up in his mind when he was speaking with Otabek- or rather listening to Otabek speak- that dark, silver lined shadow haunted him, both sleeping and not. He wondered, if Otabek knew would he do anything about it? Probably not. There was nothing to be done, anyway. 

It’s a friday when Yuri’s world comes crashing down and he learns about how vile and overwhelmingly destructive humans can really be. It’s a friday when Alexei struts into his room and finally takes what he had claimed as his own that night not too long ago. Yuri wishes that Otabek wouldn’t leave him alone but the finality of the door clicking shut echoes around the room and settles in Yuri’s ears hard and heavy. 

He tries to pretend that he’s not afraid of him, like his sudden presence now doesn’t make his legs weak and his gut twist in terror but Alexei has such a dark look to him, his eyes shining with malice as he approaches Yuri’s bed.

“Sweet thing,” he says and grazes his knuckle across Yuri’s cheek. It’s a soft touch but Yuri still flinches away from him as if he had been slapped. He hates how his body reacts without asking his permission first. Alexei’s fingers trail down his face, over the smooth curve of his jaw and down to where the cold metal of the collar meets his skin. In his own turmoil he can feel Otabek’s absence like he never had before, like an empty hole where there had never been one and he hates him for it. He hates him. He had foolishly started to think of him as something of a protector, something of a lifeline to a safety outside of that place. With the way he had so easily up and left him to Alexei’s mercy Yuri should have known better. 

It’s not like anything he had ever experienced, this thing. He was so used to people touching him at that point but the way Alexei did it, the way he undressed him, almost ripping his clothes off in the process without a care of whether he hurt Yuri or not- Yuri knew he was not going to be getting a bath. 

There was a certain vulnerability to being naked and in being seen like that by someone who you do not want to be seen by. There is malice and evil about Alexei and though Yuri had encountered armies of demons and the Fallen in his time he had always had the means to smite them then. There was no flaming sword in that moment, there was no army to back him up. There was nothing except his own self and his own vulnerabilities. 

Alexei starts with a hand on his thigh, his hand cold against Yuri’s skin. Yuri pushes him away and he goes but he laughs like it’s funny only to do it again. The hand moves up over his thighs, fingertips brushing against his navel and his stomach and his chest until Alexei grabs a fistful of his hair and pulls his head back. There’s no way that he can’t  _ not _ look at him in that moment, no matter how much he would like to look away. 

“You’re mine,” he says, a painful reminder. “Why do you refuse me? What’s the point?” 

There is none. Yuri still grinds his teeth and tries to jerk away, still trying to resist, to fight this off, to save himself. It only results in Alexei’s fingernails digging painfully into his skin. There will probably be marks there, as red and as angry as he feels. 

Alexei tuts. “If you play nice,” he says as if speaking to a child that will not listen, “I’ll go easy on you.” 

“Fuck you,” Yuri spits, yet another thing he had learned during his time there. He knew it was supposed to be an insult but Alexei’s smile just widens as if to him it means nothing; as if they’re just words. Maybe they are. Yuri has no worth there- whatever he says, whatever he does it is just a small speck in a grand scheme that does not involve him. 

“Baby has learned some bad words,” he says and the knot in Yuri’s stomach tightens until he feels nauseous, like he’ll vomit right there and then. His mouth is dry, his fingers curling into tight fists in the sheets.

Alexei does not go easy on him, but not like he was ever going to in the first place and no matter how loudly Yuri yells and kicks there is no mercy. Alexei is bigger, he’s stronger. He flips Yuri over and grabs him by the base of his bad wing while the other grips his hip, touch bruising and painful. It feels like being split in half, like Alexei has taken a knife deep inside of him and has twisted it quick and painfully harsh.

“You’re mine,” Alexei tells him, wrapping his fingers around Yuri’s neck as if the collar weren’t enough. As he does Yuri can feel whatever he had gathered of himself, the small confidences, the small assurances disappear in the blink of an eye as Yuri lays there, his body tired of the kicking and the screaming and the scratching. They all get him nothing and nowhere so what, he wonders, is the point? Soon enough Alexei grows tired of all the noise, of telling Yuri to shut up and be quiet. It’s convenient enough with the small pressure plate on the side that, with just a simple touch, allows a small current of electricity to shock Yuri. He cries out from the pain but grows quiet soon enough. 

He wishes it would stop, though. He knows the pain, understands it as a part of his new existence despite its newness but this humiliation- it’s completely strange to him the way Alexei is making him feel at that moment, more powerless than he’s ever felt before. 

It lasts an eternity, maybe two. It lasts so long Yuri loses track of time, of himself, of the happenings around him. It’s like he’s not in his body anymore but rather outside of it watching Alexei take him like some sort of horror movie with no stop button. And Alexei- he’s inside.   
__  
God, he’s inside of him and it feels nothing short of a horrible, agonizing little bundle tied up with a bow on top and thrown at him only for it to explode like a bomb. He wishes it would kill him.

So Yuri did the only thing he knew of to do; he closed his eyes and tried to will it away, tried not to feel the pain raging all over him and setting his nerves on fire. His mind wanders off to when Otabek was there, how he’d thought he had just up and left without a single word but no, that wasn’t true. Yuri knew that now, was realizing it slowly in his hazy state as Alexei lifted his hips up and started moving faster. When Alexei had appeared Otabek had stopped with his hand on the knob and he’d turned. He’d turned to look and his eyes had landed on Yuri and his lips had parted as if he were going to say something but he didn’t. He stayed quiet, looking like a kid lost in the middle of the street, like he was about to cry out for his mom to get get him out of a situation he couldn’t possibly resolve on his own. But none of that matters in the end, does it? It doesn’t when Alexei had told him to leave a second time with a certain harshness to his voice and Otabek had done it without question or complaint.

-

Otabek leaves the room, feet heavy against the ground as he practically drags himself away from that inconspicuous door and what still remains behind it. He goes down the stairs, into the kitchen, where he promptly empties the contents of his stomach into the trashcan. The cook is going to throw a fit when he sees but in that moment it is gloriously empty and the cool tile feels good against his skin when his legs finally decide to give out and send him crashing down to the floor.

He doesn’t understand this. 

He had thought that it would be easy to steel himself when the time came- and it did, it did come with the sudden force and destruction of an unprecedented storm that wasn’t supposed to be that bad but it had destroyed everything in it’s path and  _ that _ , _ that _ was the part Otabek didn’t understand. Why was it suddenly so hard to leave that room, so hard to leave Yuri behind at Alexei’s mercy? Alexei had told him about the contract. Yuri must have already signed it and agreed to it if it was happening already. And so soon, too. Otabek feels another rush of sickness seize over him but when he leans over the trashcan again the only thing he can do is gag. His stomach is empty.

He must make a pathetic sight, then. Whoever sees him in such a state would surely laugh and then tell him to get over it, that there are other things to do, worst things to get upset about though it wasn’t in their job description.

The things is this: Otabek  _ shouldn’t  _ care. He has no reason to at all. Yuri is his job assignment and though he had promised Mila to keep him safe all he had to do was make sure it was only Alexei that could get his hands on him and not any of the other guys. That was it, that was all that was asked of him. The helplessness was new. He figured he would be over it soon enough, that maybe it was something that he ate that morning that was making him feel sick like that. 

He knows it’s done and over with when he sees Alexei again, carefully kept and pristine as if he hadn’t done a thing except there’s a few strands of hair out of place and he has a wicked grin in his face that clearly gives him away. His sudden presence and the feeling that surrounds him makes Otabek feel like prey in the high grass about to be pounced on and get torn to pieces.

“You should return to your post,” Alexei tells him. There is not malice in his voice but it’s simplicity is terrifying. As Otabek is moving away past him he says, almost as an afterthought, “He was so good.”

Otabek wishes he hadn’t heard that. It would stick with him for a long time. He spoke about Yuri like most spoke about Mila; as if he were nothing. 

There are a lot of things Otabek had done both for Alexei and all the other men he had worked for. He didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count all the things he had done for the sake of doing them but he does have enough to count the things he regretted most. 

Alexei had left Yuri a mess. Sheets rumpled, clothes left all over the floor. Yuri was sitting on the middle of the bed, shaking so badly he had only managed to put his shirt on though Otabek didn’t understand why because it wasn’t even that cold in the room. He could see the sticky white mess that had been left between his thighs. Yuri’s face was red, cheeks wet from crying and eyes red-rimmed. He had curled his wings carefully around himself like armor.

His head snaps up when Otabek steps into the room, a deep frown forming on his face. Was he angry? Otabek takes a step forward and then stops. There was no reason to be in there, none at all. What would he do with Yuri? Offer comfort that wasn’t asked for? Even so, he can’t stop himself for offering a hand even if Yuri will not take it. 

He looks wholly miserable, smaller than ever and meek. There are truths there that Otabek can’t face, not unless he wants to start questioning everything he had ever known. Because  _ this-  _ it all happened because of him. He let it, it was his fault because as well as he played the part of villain he also played the part of coward extraordinarily well. 

He runs Yuri a bath, extra hot because he knows from experience with Mila that he must be sore. He doesn’t see the bloodstains when Yuri stands on shaky legs, only after he’s in the bathroom does he notice it and in a fit of unprecedented rage he rips the sheets from the mattress, leaves it bare, and throws it in the hamper. Someone will be up to take care of that. Otabek doesn’t want to see it there and he doesn’t want Yuri to either. 

Yuri doesn’t seem to care much about his nakedness as he takes his shirt off and slips into the tub, a small shaking sigh escaping his lips. He draws his knees up to his chest, face bare of any emotion but his frame still shakes. 

“Yuri,” Otabek starts because he doesn’t know any other way to. He’s not good at comforting people. 

“Please get Mila,” he says, quiet and broken. His eyes remain on the tiled wall the whole time.

-

Mila, 18 years old and foolish, meets Gregori at a special event downtown. He has a thing for young girls, he tells her, but not   
too   
young and she was just perfect. Mila pretends to be flattered at what she thinks is supposed to be a compliment. Inside she wants to run as far away from him as possible. She had just moved to Moscow during that time and was living from customer to customer, hoping one of them would be generous enough to let her spend the night until she managed to get her own place. Perhaps Gregori could see this or he had already been told by someone. Maybe it was the reason she had been so easy to take advantage of. 

She's wearing a cocktail dress, short and tight that makes her figure just pop. She's caught the eye of more than one man that night, none of them offering up quite enough to convince her to go home with them but Gregori seems like just the right one. Gaudy, obscene, and not afraid to flaunt what he has he had been grabbing at her all night, whispering obscenities in her ear as they danced. 

She had felt the gun he'd hidden under his jacket and asked him, “are you just happy to see me?” 

He drove a Corvette, white with gold rims and a leather interior. It was nice, Mila liked it well enough. He spent the whole ride to his house talking about his business (he was a drug lord), how much money he had (just enough for a pretty thing like her), and what he was planning to do to her (“so many things, baby. Just you wait”). He talked and talked so much like he didn't care who listened to him. She could have been undercover; she could have been wired. None of that seemed to bother him much. He was such a reckless man she wondered how he hadn't been caught yet. 

He lived in a shiny new high rise that had just been built in the middle of the city, high up with a nice view but mismatched and tacky furniture that did the place no justice. After that it was routine; he undressed her, he fucked her, and Mila put up with it because she had to. The only difference that day had been that he had asked her to spend the night and even paid her extra for it. 

He was good with his words. Mila hadn’t realized it at first but he was. She stayed there for a whole week and he’d bought her whatever she asked of him. Shoes, clothes, expensive meals at five star restaurants. Everything and anything she wanted. 

And then he suggests the trip to Kazan. Just for quicky business, he tells her. Nothing more but he’d really like it if she were there. She doesn’t refuse.

She picks out her clothes carefully for the trip. Just three days, he tells her and nothing more. Still, she picks out her best because she’s no stranger to this world. She knows Gregori will most likely be meeting important people and she will be nothing more than the eye candy on his arm but that requires looking good. Before anything else, though, Gregori presents her with a pretty pair of brand new wedges. For the trip, he tells her, a wide grin on his face. He gets down on his knees and places them on her feet almost reverently. 

At the airport they had stopped for some food and that day, at least in the beginning, Mila hadn’t been worried about a thing. They stopped for coffee and a quick sandwich at one of those fancy cafes they had just built at the airport. It was expensive and Mila was just glad that she didn’t have to pay for any of it. She had felt spoiled and pampered and taken care of.

They had those sniffing dogs there. It’s a cute little bloodhound, the kind they used for hunting and other things. It’s ears were floppy, its face a wrinkly mess but Mila still found it cute as it hobbled around on stubby legs. It was wearing a vest indicating its position; drug sniffing. It was a very professional dog, just doing its job, smelling out the bad guys and the things they hide. When it walks by Mila it stops and goes crazy as if it can sense it on her. She stumbles back, trying not to trip over her shiny new shoes and smiles politely at its handler, hands held up in front of her as if to say,  _ it’s a mistake.  _ And then? She ends up in a dark room, her ass sore from when she’d fallen after Gregori had pushed her to the ground in his rush to get out of there. What a piece of shit. 

The dogs never lie. Gregori had gotten away but the only person that could be blamed was her because it was in  _ her _ shoes that they had found neatly wrapped packages of cocaine. Right in the wedge like a treasure found by the wrong people. 

“So, what do you have to say in your defense?” The woman that asked her this had a cold and sterile feeling about her. Her hair was pulled back, not a single strand out of place, and knotted neatly at the base of her neck. She was wearing rubber gloves even when she was no longer touching Mila or the drugs and she never smiled. 

“It wasn’t me,” Mila tried, knowing it wouldn’t get her anywhere anyway. Gregori was long gone, she’d seen him make a dash for the exits while she was on the floor, an officer’s knees between her shoulder blades and her hands getting cuffed behind her.

“They always say that,” she tells her. “Women like you, they always find an excuse. You’re full of them.”

Not even three hours later Mila gets arrested and charged with drug possession and with intent to smuggle over domestic borders. She’s in a state of shock; she hadn’t even managed to get out of Moscow but in that instant she should have known. How long had Gregori been grooming her? How many times had she been his mule without even realizing it? 

The cuff her once again and drag her down to the sheriff’s office where she’ll wait in a cell, stuck in transit, until they place her somewhere more secure. Butyrka, probably, or wherever it is that whores like her go. There, she’ll wait even longer for her trial. She’d probably be appointed a government lawyer, some poor kid straight out of law school with a store-bought suit slightly too big for him who would stumble over his words when he stood in front of the judge. And they expected her to have a chance. All’s fair, and all of that, but not there, not with her, not in that world. 

None of those things happen, though. Mila spends a good two days worrying about it, in the same clothes she had worn at the airport because there was nowhere for her to bathe and nothing for her to change into. She had left everything she had back at Gregori’s place and her suit case was long gone, probably taken to see if she had been stupid enough to hide drugs in there too. Of course she hadn’t. Of course not, unless Gregori had gotten into her things, too. What a shame she’d become.

Alexei comes to her early into the morning of the third day. As horrible of a man as he is she had seen then as something of a savior. She would have fallen to her knees and kissed the shiny leather of his boot when he got her out of there, she was so thankful. Of course there was always a price like there had been for Alexei to bribe the guards and get her out of there. It had been easy, for him.

She follows him outside and then around the building to the back mostly because she has nowhere else to go. The guard had handed her her shoes and instead of putting them on she had been in such a shock that they still dangled from her fingers even when Alexei offered her a cigarette, which she had declined. 

“He really screwed you over.” It wasn’t a question but an understatement. Yes, Gregori had screwed her over. Mila could spend a good portion of her time cursing his name but what would that do? Alexei gives her options. “He took something from me.”

“And?” 

“I want you to get it back.” And then he places the gun in her hand. It’s cold, harsh, and hard. He says it and doesn’t give her an option on the matter. She must do it or it will be her that ends up with a bullet in her head. 

Gregori had somehow, in the time that she had been locked up, managed to leave the country. He had left his apartment empty save for the furniture but all of his paperwork and clothes and money were gone with not a trace of him to be found. It had been foolish of her to look there first. 

Alexei had, of course, accounted for that. He had connections all over the world. No less than 42 hours after Mila had been let out of that cell was she already on a plane to the Ukraine, sitting in first class with a blanket over herself. He was hiding out in a seedy motel in a run down part of Kiev. He had connections there, she’d heard, people who would keep him safe but not safe enough, at least not from her. Mila had memorized all of the details.

He had taken something from Alexei and he had taken something from her too and there was only one thing that remained to do. She had bought a pair of wedges almost identical to the ones he had given her that day save that there were no drugs hidden in them. She had dressed up so nicely only to end up with blood on her skirt later. 

She had never killed a man because she had never expected to need to do such a thing. It should have been easy, she considered. All the men she had been with throughout her life had done it and they all seemed fine or as fine as anyone in that situation could ever be. It was just the simple press of a trigger. Alexei had taught her. Just aim and squeeze and watch for the kick back. That can be a real son of a bitch. 

Gregori’s eyes had grown when he had opened the door of motel room number twenty-four. He had been expecting room service, not the very girl he had screwed over in Moscow and abandoned at the airport. She should have been in jail, he was counting on it. Except there she was, radiant, glowing. She had covered up her eyebags with makeup and she looked perfect. 

“Mila,” He’d said, stumbling back a bit in surprise. He hadn’t slammed the door shut on her and that must have been a good sign. She wasn’t a small girl by any means but to him she must have looked particularly harmless, not at all like a threat. “How did you-?”

“How did I get here?” She stepped inside, onto the stained carpet.There was a single bed in the room, a queen. He must have been expecting company. She could feel the weight of the gun on her, tucked away under her jacket. Her hands had not been shaken, her gaze had not wavered. She was angry. Maybe that is what had made it all easier to do. “You didn’t do a very nice thing back there. And here I thought we had something special.” She pouted, smelled the lingering scent of pot in the air. She stepped forward and he back until the backs of his knees hit the mattress and he falls onto it. Mila follows, looms over him and presses her knee down onto the mattress beside him, feels it dip. She had ten, probably eight minutes now considering the time she was wasted already, before the getaway car arrives to whisk her away. Alexei had been very explicit with his instructions. 

“Hey.  _ hey, _ ” Gregori says holding his hands up in front of his chest. His laugh is tight and stilted. “I got nervous, okay. It ain’t my fault. How was I supposed to know?” That’s how he said it as if it had somehow been Mila’s for getting sniffed out. It made her angry. 

“You’re blameless,” she says, “but see now we’re both stuck in a kind of bad situation, aren’t we? I got arrested for drugs I didn’t even know I was possessing,  _ you _ owe a very powerful man $20,000 for a product that was never delivered.” She tuts as if chastising a small child and watches Gregori’s throat bob up and down. With practiced ease she reaches into her coat and pulls out the gun. The whole room stands still. “I don’t know about you but I really,  _ really _ wouldn’t want to make someone like Alexei angry.”

“A- Alexei. How-” She cocks the gun, presses down against the safety with her thumb and clicks it off. She presses it right against his temple and that quiets him down soon enough.

“Not the point,” she says, quiet and deadly. There is nothing but pure fear in Gregori’s eyes. She must have looked the same way when those officers had pinned her to the ground and handcuffed her. Helpless; vulnerable. She had never seen such a man as him in such a position. It was almost intoxicating. 

“Tell him I’ll pay it back,” he says, an almost begging tone to his voice. “The drugs are gone but I can get him the money by the end of the week. All $20,000 of it. I promise!” He had gone right into begging and making promises he couldn’t keep. Next he would start groveling on his knees, begging for his life. 

Mila presses the barrel of the gun gently to the side of his face like a kiss or a lover’s caress. Soft and gentle. She doesn’t shoot him then but rather makes him think he has a chance. There was no way he was going to be able to get that money. He was a poor, desperate man now with no home, nowhere to go and a powerful enemy on his tail. She makes him think he has a chance before she pulls the trigger just how she had been taught. It almost surprises her as it had surprised him if he had even had a chance to be surprised in the first place. It lands right above his left eye. Mila turns and doesn’t give herself the chance to watch as the blood, and consequently the life, spills out of him and onto the bed. 

Someone will probably be in after her to make sure the job is done and to clean up but she doesn’t care about that. She had done it and as promised the car was outside waiting for her, windows tinted and dark as night. It’s in there, sitting on the cold leather and separated from the driver by a partition that it really hits Mila that she has just, for the first time in her life, killed a man. The hysterics set in though there is no guilt. She can’t seem to stop crying and there is no one there to comfort her. 

No one shows up at her door to take her away when she gets home She is not in Russia’s most wanted list for killing Gregori. Alexei tells her she did a good job and that, then, is how she becomes the Mednikov  _ Bratva’s _ whore. 

-

It’s a friday when Mila meets Sara. 

The house is quiet that day. The usual hustle and bustle has quieted down somewhat with Alexei away to do whatever it is that he does at that time. Sometimes some of the men like to gather around and drink when the boss isn’t looking and sometimes Mila gets dragged along. She’s the entertainment, of course. Otabek is doing his job, with Yuri. She is without protection but it’s fine. It’s okay. 

The man that’s dragging her along- she was forgotten his name already even though she sees him around all the time but his face, however, she does not forget- keeps a tight grip around her as if scared that if he loosens it she will escape it. He’s been drinking, she can smell it in his breath every time he talks to her. It’s foul, rancid. 

He leds her through the maze that is the house, down another set of stairs and what is the basement of the house though it’s not really a basement by normal standards because it’s just as opulent as the rest of the place. That is what most of the guys call the game room and it is not a wrong name. There are three pool tables, green felt top and shiny mahogany along with multiple TVs and game consoles. The couches were a little old and beat down from so much use but since Alexei never went down there much anyway no one really bothered to get new ones. 

Mila had been down there enough times though most of them she had been too busy getting fucked to notice any of the details. There’s a gaggle of men there already, anticipation almost choking the air. They all look at her as she comes in and her cheeks color red at the attention. The man whose arm is around her smiles at the group, raises a brow and says,

“So?”

There are usually very many girls like her at the house, at least none that work full time except for when there’s a new shipment and consequently another auction. Sometimes the men brought along their own girls, giggly and young and cheaper than her but it wasn’t often. When the crowd splits almost neatly in half and another girl steps through, unsure and wary of the men around her one can only begin to imagine Mila’s surprise.

She’s pretty, tall but not taller than Mila with long black hair brushed over one shoulder and obvious fear in her wide eyes. Her skin must have once been a pretty golden color but at that moment was ashen and pale. Her hands trembled slightly where they were held clasped in front of her as if trying not to show it. 

“What is this?” Mila asked though she knew, already. It was obvious in the way they all shifted around, the way they all looked at her, expecting. 

“Well, you are the entertainment, aren’t you? Entertain us.”

They’d set up one of the couches, for them. Mila had thought, very briefly, of refusing. She could, she knew that. There was no way they could make her do it but by the way the girl was all curled up into herself Mila knew knew she didn’t have the same choices. She thought, if not me, then who? If not her then one of the men there and they would not go as easy on her as Mila knew she could. 

The girl kept her head lowered as they were lead over to the couch. This reminded Mila of some scene from a porno, one she was watching from far away. 

“It’s easier if you pretend it’s someone else,” Mila tells her, gently taking the girl’s hand and brushing a thumb over her knuckles. “What’s your name?”

“Sara,” she says, accent thick but understandable. “My name is Sara.”

“Sara,” Mila says, leaning in close against her ear so she can keep her voice quiet. So no one else hears.  “What language do you speak?” Meaning: where is your home?

“Italian,” Sara says and Mila, who had never had an interest in speaking any such language suddenly felt an urge to learn it if only to provide some measure of comfort for the girl before her. 

“Sara,” Mila says as reassuringly as she possibly can. For that moment she has only Russian. “My name is Mila and you’re going to be okay.” She places a hand on her thigh, as slow and gentle as could be. The crowd was growing impatient around them, eagerly waiting, though Mila didn’t know how to proceed. She had never done this before, not in front of so many, and Sara’s anxiousness was rubbing off on her. They just needed to get through this but Mila didn’t want to rush, didn’t want to push, didn’t want to do something that neither of them wanted. “I’m going to kiss you, is that alright?”

It took a small moment but Sara nodded. Maybe it was a reflex. For her saying now sometimes wasn’t an option. Mila takes it anyway and weaves it into a pretty little tale of what she pretends is consent. She cradles the back of Sara’s head carefully in her palm. Pulls her closer and in. Her breath is sweet, her lips even more so. Someone wolf whistles and Mila hates to admit it but her heart skips a beat at that first touch. Sara reaches out and grips her arms, seeking some semblance of balance or maybe comfort. She must have found something there because she relaxes, slightly and the crowd leaves them feeling alone in the room until Otabek comes in and ruins the whole thing. 

Except that there was nothing to ruin in the first place. Mila had been silently praying for the strength to be able to get through this. When she pulls away Sara’s eyes are wide, dark, and right on her. Her lips are shiny with spit and red. 

“Party’s over,” Otabek says, presence sudden and overwhelming and  _ loud _ . He looked angry, irritated. Mila could clearly see the way the corners of his mouth turned down sharply and the way his fingers were curled in at his sides, not yet fists but getting there. 

“Hey!” Someone says, pushing through the crowd. Mila looks at him and it’s the same man that had brought her in. “I paid good money for this and they’re going to finish.” He’s loud, abrasive. Mila knows that he’s not talking to her but she still flinches away from his tone. 

“I said it’s over, Max,” Otabek says, the air thick with tension. He’s not her, he doesn’t flinch away. “Mila, let’s go.”

Mila goes. Outside she stops, though, and turns to Otabek. “Take her, too,” she says and Otabek gives her a confused look. “The other girl. Take her home, Otabek, don’t leave her in there with them.” She doesn’t want to think about what they’re planning on doing to her now that she’s gone. Sara’s fear lingers on her skin like a bad smell. Otabek looks like he’s about to decline her request but then he nods. 

“Upstairs,” he says, before he turns to go back into the room. “He wants to see you.”

Mila knows he’s not talking about Alexei. 

-

He’s still shaking by the time Mila gets there though he has managed to calm down considerably. Otabek had left him in the tub to get Mila and that had left Yuri with the task of getting himself dressed. It was harder than he had anticipated but he’d managed.  The bed smelled like Alexei. It was a smell he couldn’t forget like it had embedded itself forever on his sheets, on his clothes, on his skin. When Mila finds him he’s curled up in a corner on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest. He can’t stand to be where it had happened. The room was suffocating him but he couldn’t leave it

Mila had seen this before. The helpless broken look on Yuri’s face was obvious and as he sat there, wings curled around his shivering form. Mila understood that there was only one thing to be done. 

It was something she was familiar with, not with Yuri but when she worked at the Brothel. They would bring in the young girls, really young and there they didn’t have a chance. They never had a chance. It has always been her job to take care of them. She had taken it upon herself because nobody else would.  She trusts Otabek to take Sara home and so she was able to put her out of her mind for the time being. She places all her attention instead on Yuri. 

It’s dark in the room. The day had passed by her, without her even noticing it and already the sun was working its way into the horizon. She finds that there is no use in asking if he’s okay. They both know he’s not. Instead, Mila settles for the simplicity of silence and the outcome of the situation. 

There are bruises on his arms, and if Mila were to lift up his shirt, she knows she would find marks there as well marking his shame. Around his neck, too, where the collar has shifted just a bit, she can see the red, raw skin. It is an unavoidable truth, also proof of what has just occurred. It cannot be easy for him, then, to forget until they fade completely. Although Mila feels as though they will never really have a chance to. Some things stay, like scars. 

“It is easier, ” She says after a long silence “if you have something to find comfort in. Just one thing to keep you going.”

Yuri turns his face away from her. His cheeks are a ruddy red, a color that the gold of his hair cannot hide. “I hate him.” is all he says. 

Mila knows he is not talking about just Alexei. 


	4. Suka

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read tags carefully.

Mila’s anger is explosive. Otabek can see the dark clouds gathering on her face, the thunder storms that become her eyes and belatedly he thinks, I deserve this. He can still see Yuri in his mind’s eye those last few seconds before he’d closed that door, can see the way he had looked so small but still so fierce with Alexei looming over him, as if somehow he could fight him off, saving himself in the process. Otabek didn’t need to be there to know what had happened next. It’s clear to him now, almost like glass, and if there were anything left in his stomach he’s sure he would have thrown it up already, head tipped forward into the sink. But he’s completely empty save for the sudden and unknowable weight in his chest and Mila is slowly, slowly, slinking towards him. 

The door clicks shut with a controlled force and Otabek tries not to flinch away from it. The size of his apartment had never bothered him too much before then, the small coziness perfect for just him but right then and there it felt suffocating, like the carefully painted walls were slowly closing in on him inch by torturous inch. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything except try to survive the tension. And it’s not like Mila was blocking him off, either. He could easy sidestep her, make a run for the door and avoid this like he so often avoided everything else. He doesn’t. Instead, he backs up until he hits the counter, elbows knocking against the coffee maker and some dirty dishes he’d left there earlier. The sound is deafening. 

“Did Sara get back alright?” She asks and the calmness in her voice throws Otabek for a loop, leaving him disoriented. She cocks her head to the side, hair falling over her face slightly. She reaches up and tucks it behind her ear like she had asked him about the weather and wasn’t at all contemplating ripping him apart at that very moment. “Well? Did she?” She arches a perfectly plucked brow when the question goes unanswered. 

Otabek swallows, wills his hands to unclench. “She did,” he says. It had been easy enough, easier still to be able to get her away from all the men that had surrounded her, drool running down their chins as if she were a piece of meat that they couldn’t wait to get their hands on. Sara had followed him out, hands still shaking at her sides as they made their way out of Alexei’s house and into Otabek’s car.

“Okay.”

She lived in the brothel down in the red light district, she told him, something like shame in her voice as she did. Otabek didn’t need directions because he still remembers picking Mila up from that place sometimes late into the night, remembers how she would fall into his arms crying because a particularly notorious client had been too rough with her. The bruises he saw on her later would make him see red but she’d kept him steady where he couldn’t do it himself. It was something like that with Sara, too. She didn’t speak after that, head pressed against the glass as she watched the city pass by in a blur of neon and smoke. She looked exhausted but not all that worried as if she trusted him just enough to get her to where she needed to be. It wasn’t home, it would never be home, but it promised a warm bed for the night even if sometimes it had to be shared. 

She was pretty, all long limbs and dark skin mottled with even darker bruises, her hair long but tangled now from too many fingers grabbing at it and pulling. She didn’t ask him his name and Otabek only knew her’s because of Mila but it was okay because he didn’t plan on getting too well acquainted with her. 

The sight of the dilapidated building with the blacked out windows made Otabek’s stomach swoop. It was familiar enough to him but there was still an ominous feeling around the whole thing, as if he steps inside he will never be able to make his way back out again, lost in a labyrinth of fake moans and muffled cries. Sara sucks in a deep breath of air through her teeth but pretends that everything is fine when Otabek looked at her with concern. 

“The matron will be mad if I don’t hurry,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt and stepping out onto the damp sidewalk. Not many people are walking by and not many would know the building was there if they weren’t specifically looking for it. 

Otabek knew he didn’t have to but there was something about the way Sara’s eyes dropped to the ground and her shoulders hunched almost in a mix defeat and exhaustion that makes him follow her inside. While he makes sure that she makes it up to her room alright the matron sidles up beside him, large breasts pressed against his side. A shiver of disgust runs down his spine. She’s an older woman with already greying hair that she’s seemingly forgotten to dye this month and over-lined red lips. Her breasts are huge, her hips wide and she looks like the mold used for every other matron in every brothel in the world, like every one of them aspires to be just like this one. It’s true what they said; if you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen them all. 

“Otabek,” she said and he hates that she knows him. “What a pleasant surprise.” Her fingers pressed under his chin, tips of her nails digging into his skin unpleasantly as she forced him to look at her. “But a surprise nonetheless. Is there anything I can get for you? We have some new girls, you see or did you already get your fill with her?” She tipped her head towards the stairs, where Sara had gone up before disappearing down the hall.

“Nothing of the sort,” Otabek said and the woman practically salivated when he pulled a large wad of cash from his wallet. “For her,” he said, handing it to the woman who took it with eager fingers. “No clients for the rest of the night and tomorrow.”

“You’re too good of a man,” she had called after him as he made his way out. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to survive here for so long.” But that was a lie. There was nothing good about Otabek.

In the present Otabek wants to get as far away from Mila as possible. She’s studying his face, making him feel open and vulnerable as if she’d torn his chest open and was currently studying its contents. He feels like a child that has done something wrong and is waiting at the edge of his seat for a punishment. Because this is what this is if he’s honest; a punishment and Mila is the one in control, the one with the iron whip ready to split his skin open.

“You are one heartless fucker,” she says, throat raw as she reaches around him and grabs the bottle of Vodka in the cabinet above his head. She had bought him that not too long ago as a gift though he’d barely touched it. She presses the lip of the bottle against her mouth and scrunches her eyes shut as she takes three long gulps. He knows it must burn going down, knows it probably settles in her stomach like fire but she doesn’t say a thing about it. She slams the bottle down on the counter so hard Otabek is scared it might break with all that force behind it, wipes her mouth and again says, “you’re heartless.”

Otabek flinches, pain flaring up as she presses the tip of her fingernail against his chest. It gets the point across well enough but he knew, already. He knew; Otabek Altin is a bad man and he is fucking heartless.

He wraps his fingers around her wrist but doesn’t pull her away. Her eyes dance from the point of contact to to his face as if she’s not sure which to focus on. “Mila,” he tries but she shakes her head fiercely, her hair flying all about her face. She wrenches her wrist from his grip. 

“Don’t. Don’t do that. I told you to do one thing, one  _ goddamn thing _ Otabek and you couldn’t even do that.” Was she going to call him worthless, too? He thinks that he deserves that, too and maybe she wouldn’t be wrong, not really. 

He tries not to think about Yuri’s face, has tried endlessly to not think about it ever since Alexei told him in that firm and clear voice to leave but  _ god _ if the thought of it doesn’t make his stomach twist hot and tight, doesn’t make bile rise up in his throat all over again.  

“What do you want from me, Mila?” It hadn’t meant to come out as roughly as it had, hadn’t meant for it to sound angry but that’s how he feels, not at Mila but at himself, at Alexei, at the cruelty he had surrounded himself with for so long but that now seems wholly unfamiliar. 

“I wanted you to take care of him!” Mila shouts, seeming something close to hysterics, a madwoman if he’s ever seen one. “And look, look what you fucking did, Otabek! He’s fucking ruined.”

Otabek swallows hard, watching the harsh rising and falling of Mila’s chest. She’s breathing like she’s never breathed before in her life and like she will never breathe again. 

“Yeah, well-” And here he stops, here he allows himself a moment to think about what exactly it is that he was going to say and even if he knows it isn’t a good idea and because he was still recovering from being at the cocked end of a loaded gun he says, “we all have to do things we don’t want to do here.” And the worst part of it is that he  _ means it _ . 

He feels like he’s just pulled the trigger and the resounding silence afterwards is the bullet, piercing his skin, making his ears ring with the resonance. Mila’s face shifts, contorts into something that could only be disgust and it stings so badly knowing that it’s directed at him. She’s never looked at him like that, not in all the years that they’ve known each other, not ever. She takes a step back and if it weren’t for the fact that he was leaning up against the counter he feels like his knees wouldn’t have been able to support him for much longer.

“You think you know about any of this? You think just because you’re Alexei’s fucking goonie you know what it’s like to be  _ raped _ -”

“Who said anything about rape?” Otabek interrupts, taken aback by her words. No, no, no that wasn’t right, that wasn’t right at all. It couldn’t be true. It sounded wrong to his ears, ugly, like nails against a chalkboard. “He signed a contract, Mila. He signed it, he agreed to this.” 

He sees Mila’s shoulders slump, sees her face fall and it’s not the reaction he had expected from her at all. He had expected more anger but not this look of utter betrayal. “Bullshit.”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s true. He signed it, Alexei showed me.” His mind flashes back to that day in Alexei’s office, the drink he’d been offered, the ring of condensation that had formed on the table from the untouched glass. He thinks about Alexei waving the paper around.  _ If you do a good enough job maybe I’ll let you fuck him too.  _ But his mind skips over one important detail, perhaps the most important of all: Alexei hadn’t let him see the document up close, not once while he was in there. Maybe it was because his mind had been in a haze, between the angel and everything else going on. Amid the mess it was easy to skip over things, to not focus too close on details that aren’t meant to mean much. What’s another soul lost into the trade? Otabek had seen it all; this shouldn’t bother him so much.

“They don’t get contracts,” Mila says, dragging Otabek out of his thoughts. “They aren’t like you and me. Even if we can’t leave now we had a choice when we came into this. A desperate choice but a choice nonetheless. Yuri and the rest of the Angels? They don’t have that, Otabek.”

But Mila doesn’t think like him. That’s what he loves most about her, loves how she hasn’t let herself get lost in this like he so obviously has, loves how human it is that she cares so much. To Otabek, what he has forced himself to see as nothing more than a cog in the big, demented machine to Mila is something different. Mila sees the individuals, not the group and even if it’s no good to be so human in a world like theirs he admires it fiercely. It’s the one thing about her he hopes she never loses. 

“You don’t…” The tears are unexpected. When they well up in her eyes and run down her cheeks Otabek swears he stops breathing for that moment. Despite everything Otabek grabs her and pulls her shaking frame into his chest, tries to comfort her as best as he can even if he’s not very good at it. He feels her tears soaking into his shirt, feels her lips moving against his chest and he  _ hears _ sound but he registers it as muffled nonsense. 

He grabs her arms, pulls her away from him and quietly says, “Mila, what are you saying?”

Her face is red, eyes bloodshot and her cheeks wet. Otabek moves his hands from her arms to her cheeks and wipes them all off as well as he can. He wants to take care of her and it’s not the first time he’s considered asking her to leave this behind. 

“You have to get him out of here,” she says, wiping under her nose with the back of her hand. “You have to get Yuri out of here, Beka.” 

He cups her cheeks gently and says, “are you fucking crazy?” But her eyes are as clear as day despite the redness and he knows her well enough to know that she’s not crazy, fucking or otherwise. She’s serious about this, as serious as she’s ever been about anything else.

“No,” she says, “I’m not  _ fucking _ crazy.”

“Then at least be realistic.”

If he thinks about it too hard he feels like he will start laughing, just laugh so hard out of the fear the thought alone brings him that he’ll just die right there in his kitchen. He’d been there when Alexei had taken out a man for even  _ talking _ about going against him. He’s a wild, unpredictable man and Otabek never wants to get caught in the wrong side of things, not if he can help it. 

“If anyone can do it, it’s you.” He can see the way the gears in her head turn, the way thoughts rush in and out while she ponders this as if it could be the easiest thing in the world. Otabek scoffs. “You know the men, know the house better than anyone.”

“I’m not going to do that.” 

“You’ve seen him! He’s not going to fucking make it here, Otabek. Alexei is going to fucking run him to the ground and then none of us will be able to do anything but watch him go.”

He wants to pick a fight with her. He can’t explain this sudden urge that comes over him like waves against the jagged rocks on a shore. He wants to pick a fight, wants to point out Mila’s foolishness and have her never speak about this ever again. He wants to stop thinking about Yuri. 

“What about all the other ones? What about the ones that aren’t Yuri, what about the ones that aren’t going to get helped by savior Mila?”

“This isn’t the fucking pain olympics,” she says. “You do what you can for the ones that you can do it for and you try to live with that. Maybe we can’t do anything for the other ones but we can do something for Yuri.”

“Alexei would tear us apart.” 

“Maybe.” Mila shrugs as if the prospect didn’t terrify her and crosses her arms over her chest. “But maybe if you’re careful enough.” 

Otabek shakes his head. “There are no maybes about this. It’s either do or don’t and right now I’m looking at  _ don’t _ just like you should, too. It’s not worth it, Mila.”

In the long silence that follows Otabek wishes almost desperately to know what she is thinking about. It’s not secret that he would do almost anything to keep Mila safe and right now that was exactly what he was doing. It wasn’t that he didn’t have faith in her, that he didn’t think she was strong enough but Alexei was strong-times-sixteen and Mila was another easily replaceable whore. Otabek hated to think about it like that but it was only the truth. To Alexei, to everyone else there, that was exactly what she was. 

But her gaze is fierce, determined. With an air of finality she says again, “you’re heartless,” as she turns to go.

-

Otabek knows that every foundation, no matter how strong or complex, has its cracks and weaknesses. This is something that he knows well, better than he knows anything else. Even the Bratva, something so big and old that it had passed down the hands of one single family for generations was no exception. Something that had been built on corruption and the pain of others, something that was run by men willing to do anything for just the right price, even turn on each other, wasn’t meant to last as long as it had. Alexei had just gotten pretty damn lucky. 

Otabek’s guilt haunts him like a bad omen, a black cloud hanging over his head day and night. It manifests inside of him, something ugly fierce that digs its claws into his skin and eats him from the inside out. The worst part about it all is that there’s nothing he can do about it, not unless he’s willing to empty out everything that’s between his ribcage, leaving himself empty in the process. He can’t be like the rest of them, vacant eyed and mean.

Whatever trust had built up between him and Yuri, if he could even call it that, was gone, turned to crumbled ruin and ash by Otabek’s inability to do anything right, to  _ help _ , to do something good. He feels betrayed, can’t help it as he thinks about everything he’s done wrong before this. He’d let Alexei fool him, had trusted him so blindly and for what? 

The images flash through his mind. He’s restless, tossing and turning his way through quiet nights. Every time he closes his eyes the images flash through his mind: Yuri on the bed, Alexei the dark shadow looming over him; Yuri’s face being pressed into the pillow too hard, golden hair a tangled mess; Yuri, with silent tears on his face, fighting, always fighting.

The first time he walks into the house after that day it feels like he’s stepping into a completely different world. It’s familiar to him in the sense that he’s seen it so many times over the years but someone had snuck in during the night and shifted all the furniture slightly an inch to the left. All the men milling about are different, faces twisting into something he’s never seen before.

What Mila had suggested that day was crazy but he hadn’t been able to get it out of his head since then. It settles in right beside the guilt, etched in marble, a constant reminder that he  _ could _ do something,  _ could _ get Yuri out of there and…  _ somewhere else. _ He scoffs at the thought. Where would they go? Where would Otabek take him assuming they even made it out of the front door, assuming they were quiet enough to not rouse suspicion or clue anyone in on their plan? Out of Moscow, out of Russia. And then? They’d be in hiding forever, always on the run, always looking over their shoulders. That was no way to live but looking at Yuri now, so bruised, so frail and curled up and full of rightful hate, Otabek thinks that this is no way to live, either. 

He thinks about it anyway, thinks about it more than he should and every time he catches even the slightest glimpse of Alexei something akin to terror crawls up and down his spine. He knows that Alexei can’t read minds, knows there’s no way for him to know all the thoughts racing around in his head but the fear lingers like a bad taste in the back of his mouth. The thoughts come to him and he pushes them away, over and over again like a game of tug-o-war only to have them come back to no avail.

He knows, too, that it’s not just Alexei he has to worry about. A lot of men there were loyal to him. Otabek had never trusted them, not in all the years he’s been there. They were watchful, patient men, who would turn their backs on each other without a second doubt. If any of them caught even the slightest hint of Otabek’s intentions he has no doubt that they would run to Alexei. And for what? A pat on the back, maybe. Money. A congratulations for always being faithful to the bratva.

Mila is very pointedly angry at him. She hasn’t spoken a word to him since he’d denied her idea but he still sees her around, sees her going with the men where they need her, and then into Yuri’s room after. He can hear her talking to him through the door if he’s quiet and listens carefully enough though it’s hard to make out words. Otabek knows he shouldn’t eavesdrop, knows that Yuri above all deserves his privacy but he can’t help it. What if they’re talking about him? What if Mila is telling him about their silly plan, getting Yuri’s hopes up for no reason just to have them cruelly snatched away later when they finally realize just how ridiculous the plan is? He doesn’t think it’s right to give Yuri something he can’t actually have, and then blame  _ Otabek  _ as if he’s the reason for it.

But after this what? Alexei comes back, takes him over and over again. Because Yuri is  _ his _ and Alexei has a right to his things, a right to do whatever he wants with him. Hell, come tomorrow Alexei could decide he’s tired of him and his fierceness, sell him off for the profit he never got and Yuri will be lost maybe forever, bouncing off from one owner to the next until he’s nothing. Maybe until he’s dead.

Otabek is stuck between a rock and a very, very hard place, not knowing where to turn because each way just seems worse than the one before it.

But Otabek is not entirely unfamiliar with the helplessness, with feeling totally unable to do anything for those he cares about, no matter how much he wanted to. 

He is seven years old the last time he sees his father. Before the angels, before the Bratva. Before Alexei and before Yakov. Otabek’s childhood had never been  _ good _ but he had something; a home, a family that most of the time was just his mother. 

He barely remembers the man now, years later, can barely form a concrete image of that which was his face but the small details still linger. He remembers very clearly the crook of his nose from too many breaks, the straight line of his mouth when he was thinking too hard about something, sitting on the sofa with a cold bottle of beer clutched in his hand. He remembers the ring of wetness it would leave on the denim of his father’s jeans, later. He remembers his eyes, how dark they were and how he would always squint when he was angry or thinking too hard about something. Most of all he remembers the word carved into his chest during his long stint in prison.  _ Suka _ , it read, letters jagged and careless.. The needle had been pressed so hard into his skin it had left big, raised scars, a reflection of his struggle, his unwillingness to have it done. Otabek could feel them under his fingertips sometimes, when his father was in a nice mood and he picked him up and held him like it was supposed to mean something. They were thick and jagged under his small hands but they reminded him of the little things. 

What  _ was _ nice, anyway? In Otabek’s young eyes it was the candy bars that showed up after weeks of not seeing his father, the expensive kind with the almonds or the small bits of cookies mixed in. It was the apologetic knocks at the door at three A.M. It was the soft whispers from his father, the  _ I’m sorry _ s and the  _ I’ll never do that again _ s. Because he loved them and he wanted to be with them, with his family and he wanted to see his son grow into the young man he was meant to be. But Otabek knows now that  _ nice _ doesn’t mean anything, that it never lasts. After the apologies and the gifts the yelling would start again, almost like clockwork but it was his father’s voice he heard every time, his mother always the pacifist, always the good guy, so soft spoken and kind. 

“Please. Otabek will hear you yell.” Always worrying too much about him, never enough about herself. That was, maybe, what he loved most about her; how selfless she could be despite everything.

But it didn’t matter. None of it ever mattered in the end because his father always left, again and again and again until he finally never came back. He hadn’t felt as sad as he had expected to feel when, at the end of the second week of him being gone, no knock at the door came and no candy bars appeared on his pillow. There was no sense of loss, no betrayal. He didn’t cry, didn’t ask his mother questions that were too difficult to answer. He was there for his mother when she was alone and miserable. His father was one of the worst men Otabek knew back then but the little monetary support he provided went a long way for them.

Otabek learned at a young age just where it was that he came from, that the letters on his father’s chest weren’t a mark of honor but of someone without values, someone that couldn’t be trusted. He understood that, in a way. Even as the man’s son he never did trust him enough, never put much faith in him but he didn’t think it was fair that he had to learn about his own family from bitter school children with big ears and even bigger mouths. Children are cruel that way; he doesn’t think he was any different than them, just cruel in his own little ways.

He sits in the playground, scraped knees curled up to his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible. Scabs hadn’t formed yet so the wounds were still tender and raw, like those of a different sort gathering inside him, deep and jagged.

His father. Why can’t they stop talking about his father?

He was a big man, a mean man, a man who gambled away everything he had and would have placed his family on the table if anyone was willing to take them. No one had ever told him why his father had ended up in prison, years before Otabek had been born but he learned it that day. 

Murder, of the attempted kind. He hadn’t succeeded, of course not. He couldn’t even do that much. His father was a coward, willing to kill a man to eliminate a debt. 

His father always said that a desperate enough man would do almost anything. Was that what he was, when he turned his back on the other inmates in favor of a little protection from the guards? Was he so desperate as he spilled out all their secrets, the kind that would get them locked up on solitary for weeks? Is that how he had felt the day they pinned him down in the showers and scratched that dreadful word into his chest, making sure everyone knew where his loyalties lay?

Otabek didn’t know and he didn’t care. It was over and done with. He hadn’t even been born then, hadn’t even been a thought in his mother’s head. He wanted to lash out, be angry at the other boys, bare his teeth like a cornered dog. The best he could do was cover his ears and squeeze his eyes shut, hoping that they would disappear if he ignored them hard enough.

But people talk. People always talk and there’s nothing that Otabek can do about it but listen. Listen until the hatred manifests into something too big and bitter for his young self to understand. But it’s there in the back of his mind, it’s there in the bloody knuckles from too many after school fights, and the fierce protectiveness he feels towards his mother. 

But it wasn’t right to blame his father for everything. No matter how much Otabek hated him, no matter how much he raged, he couldn’t blame someone else for his own actions. It was he, after all, who started up as a runner for the local Bratva, delivering inconspicuous paper bags to empty warehouses and the local brothels. They took him on easily because no one would ever think to look twice at a kid his age. He could make it quick and easy through the dark back streets without ever encountering any sort of trouble. 

He took whatever money they were willing to give him easily. He knew, even then, that they weren’t giving him enough, that they weren’t being fair with him, cheating him out of his rightful earnings but there was nothing he could do about it. He could speak up, ask for more and risk getting kicked out- or worse. He didn’t put it past them to kill a kid, to kill his entire family just to prove that they could. 

He gave all the money he earned to his mother. He never told him exactly what it was that he did, not really . The lie he’d given her was that he’d somehow managed to snag a job at the local market, bagging bags for sleepy eyes mothers and teenagers just looking for a snack. The truth was that he’d tried that but they’d turned him away almost immediately. They didn’t have room for a kid like him, too young to work legally. He was a liability.

He could see the concern in her eyes, all the questions running around in her head. It’s not good money but it’s more than he would have been making just from bagging groceries at the market. But Otabek doesn’t let her ask unnecessary questions; the money keeps food on the table while her belly grows bigger and bigger every day.

They hadn’t found out she was pregnant until a month after his father had left and by then it was already too late. Maybe he had known before either of them had. Maybe that’s why he had left in the first place, because he just couldn’t deal with another kid when he could barely handle one. But Otabek was there where his father was not and he could at least try to do better even if it wasn’t the right way to do it. 

Aliya came to them late into the night, so suddenly they didn’t have time to make it to a hospital. His mother had been restless all day long before that, pacing around the apartment and struggling to take deep, shaky breaths. She hadn’t eaten a thing, hadn’t stopped to rest for just a moment. Otabek, young as he was, felt like he should have seen it coming, should have prepared better for it. 

She went into labor sometime close to midnight when the power all over the block went out. Otabek lit the candles and delivered the towels and warm water so his mother could focus on delivering the baby. He wondered if it had been like that for her when he had been born. Had she been all alone with no one there with her, not even his father? Had no one held her hand to help her get through the worst of it?

Otabek doesn’t want to think about that. It makes him infinitely sad, makes his throat clog up thinking about his mother all alone, holding him until sunrise when his father showed up with foul breath and surprise on his face, as if he hadn’t known that his son was about to arrive at any moment.

But Otabek is there for Aliya when she cries for that first time, loud in the quietness of the apartment. She’s so small, tiny fingers and toes curled as she cries and cries and cries as if to let the whole world know that she’s finally here. Otabek wraps her up in a towel and holds her as their mother catches her breath, face twisted up in pain. He feels entirely unsure about this thing, doesn’t know if she’s crying because she’s just been born or if she’s just not holding her right. Was she hungry? Was she comfortable enough? He admires her face, her eyes big and bright when she finally opens them. There’s little strands of dark hair on top of her head, soft and sweetly curled. She has a small button nose, small lips as pink as spring flowers. 

Otabek’s mother takes her from him gently, voice as soft as the night when she coos at her and rocks her back and forth to try to calm her. Otabek watches, standing in the midst of the messy apartment and smiling softly at the two people he loves most.. 

Otabek is ten years old and Aliya three when someone tries to kill them. It’s a messy operation that doesn’t succeed in killing them, only in shattering the living room window, the bullet embedding itself into the adjacent wall and leaving shards of glass all over the floor. 

It could have been an accident, the officer that bothers to show up after his mother called for help tells them, nodding along to his mother’s words and writing them down on a notepad. It could have been an accident yes, that much is true but more than likely it wasn’t. People don’t just go around shooting guns at random windows. Pulling a trigger is no accident; there is always a purpose behind it. Otabek was a smart kid. He reasons that it was probably the local bratva, trying to settle a debt his father left behind unpaid when he’d disappeared. Recently there had been too many of those coming to light, too many strange men knocking at their door at strange hours of the night and demanding money they didn’t have. His mother comes to the same conclusion as him rather swiftly and with the realization that there will be no investigation and the culprit would thus be free to return and properly finish what he’d started she packs up their entire life in three suitcases and books three tickets for Saint Petersburg, Russia. 

With something like regret on her face she had brought out the jar she’d kept under her bed stuffed full of bills and coins, money she had been saving up for years in case of a moment like this one. It’s enough for the train tickets and two months rent in a run down part of the city and then after that they were on their own. 

Otabek falls back into the same routine he’d known in Almaty. He meets Yakov in one of his pool halls, smokey and dark and asks for a job. He’d be willing to do anything, he said. He meant it, too.

Yakov had put the pool stick down and turned to him, eyeing the scrawny kid beside him that barely reached his shoulder. He said, “You got a family, kid?” Otabek, throat dry, nodded. “Then go back to them. You don’t want this kind of life.” Otabek, in his later years, thinks back to that exchange too many times to count. He should have listened. He doesn’t think much about the could-have-beens-should-have-beens much anymore but  _ god _ does he wish he could have listened to Yakov that day. He wishes he could have turned around and never once looked back. 

-

Mila shifts her bag up higher on her shoulder and stares at the building before her with defiance in her eyes. It had been years upon years since the last time she was anywhere near this part of the city. Nothing about it had changed, not the derelict buildings, not the uneven sidewalks, and not the feeling of dread settling in Mila’s stomach at the sight of it. 

She doesn’t live there anymore but in that moment it feels like she’s taken a step back in time. If she steps inside they’re never going to let her leave again. They’re going to hold her hostage, lock her into one of those filthy little rooms and make her take client after client until she couldn’t anymore. 

A bad taste forms in the back of her mouth and all she wants is to tuck tail and run. But this isn’t about her, she reminds herself. She hasn’t come back to relive the memories she has shut away under lock and key for so long, she’s come for Sara and the thought alone has her moving forward. Just one foot in front of the other, easy as breathing until she reaches the door and then it’s like her lungs have stopped working altogether. 

It smells in there, like mothballs and sweat and cheap perfume. She can hear the soft noises coming from upstairs, the soft  _ ah _ s and the grunting of men about to reach their peak. It sends a shiver of disgust racing down her spine with how familiar it all is. 

She meets the matron’s eyes from across the room and the recognition that sparks there is almost immediate. She remembers her, of course she remembers her. The girls that pass through there are replaceable, always the same, never lasting long enough to be remembered. But Mila- she always had a thing for Mila. 

She hadn’t thought about this enough to think of what to do next. When she had woken up that morning she hadn’t even thought she would make it that far. But it was too late, anyway; the matron was already making her way over to Mila, something wicked on her face. This is what Sara has to live with day by day, she thinks. This is what she used to live with, too.  

“Mila,” The matron says. “Well.” She stops next to her, hip cocked to the side as she eyes her up and down like a prize ready to be collected. “Somehow I always knew you’d come back to me. You were always my favorite girl, y’know.”

Mila feels bile and panic rising up in her throat. She won’t run, she won’t run,  _ she won’t run _ . 

“I’m here to see one of your girls,” Mila says instead of falling into her grasp. She won’t play this game, not now, not ever again. She opens the zipper of her backpack and pulls out a wad of cash. Too much. She’d had to dig through her saving to get it. She felt like a woman possessed, not understanding well enough what had made her end up all the way where she wasn’t supposed to be, ready to hand over a good amount of money,  _ her _ money, which she had worked for so damn hard. It was enough for an hour, maybe two if she got lucky, but it was just enough.

The matron’s lips purse, eyes jumping to the money and back up to Mila’s face, and then back down again. She looks like she’s going to reach for it, greedy fingers poised at the ready. It surprises Mila when she sighs and lets her hand drop back down to her side. She looks… defeated and Mila suddenly feels like the biggest inconvenience, like even just her presence is an annoyance to the woman.

“Just go,” the matron says, hand motioning over to the stairs. She takes a deep breath and then when she realizes that Mila is still there, shell-shocked and frozen right in front of her she frowns. “I said go, girl. Or else leave. I’ve got a business to run.” 

Mila doesn’t give her a chance to change her mind, quickly shaking herself out of her stupor and turning on her heels. She feels the matrons eyes on her as she makes her way up the stairs. 

Her heart drums out an unsteady beat as she scans over the names painted on each red door, nails tapping lightly against the wood as if crossing out the ones that aren’t who she seeks. It’s at the back of the hall that she finds it,  _ Sara _ written out in neat, precise writing. Here, Mila pauses. She can hear the soft hum of a song through the wood but otherwise it’s quiet. Was she sleeping? Was she busy, with a client? The thought of that makes something hot burn behind Mila’s eyes, makes her raise her hand and rap her knuckles harshly against the wood. The skin comes away red and stinging. 

Sara opens the door with a surprised look on her face. She’s wearing nothing but an oversized white men’s shirt that reaches down to the middle of her thighs, her dark hair a tangled mess. She looks sleepy, as if she had been napping or had only woken up moments before Mila’s arrival. Her face, despite the surprise at seeing Mila there, is sweet and lovely, cheeks coloring red as if she were embarrassed. Looking over her shoulder Mila expects to see the man who the shirt belongs to but in that moment Sara seems to be blessedly alone. The music that Mila had heard before comes from an iPod placed face up on the nightstand. 

Sara shifts from foot to foot and the action draws to Mila’s attention the fact that she hasn’t said a word since Sara opened the door. They’re just standing there, awkward as can be and Mila can’t think of a single word to say. How can she explain her sudden appearance? She was probably the last person Sara had expected to see.

Mila clears her throat and somehow manages a weak sounding ‘uhm.’ Her cheeks color red as a smile breaks over Sara’s face, smooth and easy. It eases some of the tension, somehow makes this all easier.

“Come inside,” she says, stepping aside and opening the door wider. Mila takes in a deep breath, holds it, and then releases it as she takes a step into the room. It’s almost like taking a step back in time- the walls, the bumpy, cold floors, the uncomfortable mattress with thin sheets that don’t do much to ward off the cold- all the same, unchanging. For all she knows this could have been her room, back then except for the little details that give it away; there are clothes strewn all about the floor that definitely aren’t hers, a small, square mirror on the dresser with a razor blade to match and barely there white residue on the surface. Mila swallows as she looks around, throat dry. She jumps when the door clicks shut and turns to find Sara leaning against it, looking as unsure as she feels. 

Mila tries again. “Hi.” But it doesn’t feel like enough. This isn’t a  _ hello how are you _ moment. This is a million and one things that Mila can’t find the right words to say. 

Sara nods. “Hi.”

“I came to see you.” 

Sara laughs, soft and sweet. “I would hope so,” she says, “otherwise you’ve come to the wrong room.”

No, Mila thinks, I’m definitely in the right room. She drops down on the bed and places her bag on the mattress next to her, thinking about where to start, what to say. The words race around in her head: I can’t stop thinking about when we kissed, about the look on your face. I can still feel the way your hands shook. I want to make you feel better, I want to keep you safe. 

“I brought you some things. Uhm, I thought you might need them. This isn’t the best place to be and I know sometimes-” 

She stops speaking when he sees Sara move towards her, eyes stuck to her long legs. She takes a seat on the bed, too, Mila’s bag a barrier between them and suddenly she’s too far away. “You brought me things?” 

Mila nods. It’s not much, just some of her old clothes she’d thought would fit Sara, a fresh pack of underwear she’d picked up a the store on her way there, some pads and tampons and warm socks for the winter. Things she knows aren’t easy to find there.

Sara’s eyes, shiny and sincere, settle on her. She looks at the clothes Mila lays out for her, arms crossed over her chest. Mila can’t read her face, can’t make out the thoughts running through her head. Does she like them? Is it too much? Was she being overbearing? 

Sara leans forward, fingers skimming over the clothes as if they are the most precious things in the world. “You didn’t have to do any of this,” she says but doesn’t sound at all put off by the gesture, just… thankful. Mila hears herself sigh in relief.

“It was the least I could do after what happened. There are many ways to meet someone for the first time. That wasn’t the most ideal one.”

Sara cocks head to the side. “No, I supposed not.”

“How are you? Did you make it back alright?”

She nods, slowly. “I did, thank you. Your friend- he was very kind.”

Mila frowns, confused. “Who? Otabek?” She had expected him to be the very last thing to come up while she was there. She was still angry with him, still reeling from the fact that he had let something like that happen to Yuri. She knew him well, but for some reason she couldn’t picture him being kind to Sara, not in a way that merited recognition. It surprises her when Sara nods, again.

“The matron. He gave her money so I wouldn’t have any... customers.” She says the word like it’s dirty. Mila guesses that the words she uses for all the men that pass through there must be quite colorful. “Tell him thank you for me? I didn’t have a chance to when he was here. I didn’t even know.” 

Mila nods, fingers tangling up on a loose thread. If she were to wrap it tight enough around her fingers it would leave a mark. Sara reaches out and grabs her hand in hers, stopping the anxious movements as she tangles their fingers together. Her hand is warm, smooth, fingers a soothing realization. “Will you stay here? With me?”

Mila hadn’t thought of it. She had expected it to be quick, to just drop off the stuff and leave again but she hadn’t expected for Sara to want her to stay. How could she say no to that? She couldn’t. So she nods, puts all of the things back in the bag and lays down on the bed next to Sara. She doesn’t realize how tired she is until her head hits the pillows. She’d barely slept the night before but now she feels like she could sleep for a year and then some. 

“Why are you staring?” Sara asks. They’re laying on their sides facing each other, hands still clasped in the middle. Mila won’t deny that she’s been staring ever since she got there, eyes roaming all over Sara’s face, hungry to memorize even the smallest of details. She doesn’t ever want to forget this, Sara, how she looks at that very moment.  

“I just-” Mila doesn’t know what to say. “I want to know about you.” 

“Me?” 

Mila nods. “You said you were from Italy, right?” 

“Yes,” she says and then the words won’t stop coming. Mila listens to her talk; about her brother, about her home, about the beach they used to visit every summer as children, about the woman that had promised her work, about all the brothels before this one. She relays her whole life in just a few moments and Mila listens intently, feeling a certain hot tightness pulling at her gut. She’s not going to cry but she comforts Sara when she inevitably does. It’s hard to talk about their lives before. Mila does the best she can to comfort Sara, cold fingers pressing against the sliver of skin that appears when her shirt rides up. She kisses her forehead and tells her she’ll take care of her.

-

Yuri’s toes dig into the carpet as something like a pensive look takes over his face. He’s sitting on the edge of the big bed, his bruises having healed considerably quick though there are still some lingering signs of Alexei on him; a fading yellow tint around his neck, a slight limp to his walk, the defeated slump of his shoulders. But he’s not curled up into himself anymore and that’s something of a step forward. His wings are tucked against his body, tips of his hair wet from the bath before she’d gotten there. He’s wearing what he always is: shorts and a too-big shirt. No socks, no shoes; Alexei always keeps him down to the bare minimum. 

“Want me to help with that?” Mila asks, stepping inside from the balcony, heavy taste of a cigarette still in her mouth, the chill from outside still lingering on her skin. 

Yuri looks at the brush laying on the bed next to him and nods. Mila offers a reassuring smile and moves on the bed behind him, running her fingers through silky blond hair before grabbing the brush. She’s careful with this wings but can’t help brushing the back of her hand lightly over the small, soft feathers at the base where they meet the skin of his back. She’s still not quite used to the sight, finding herself taken aback everytime she walks in the room and sees him there but it has gotten easier, over time. 

The thing about Yuri, to her, is that he doesn’t feel…  _ Not human _ and that must be the hardest thing to get used to. She wonders, sometimes, if Yuri sees them the same way. Are they as strange to him as he is to them?

She brushes his hair carefully, apologizing when she tugs at a knot too hard and he lets out a hiss through his teeth. He smells like the generic brand shampoo and soap that they wash him with every day. 

Otabek had gone off that day but Mila hadn’t asked him where he was going. Probably to work a job with Alexei, probably to do bad things to even worse men. She didn’t want to know, not really. She was eager to spend time alone with Yuri without Otabek’s suffocating presence, how he looked like he was about to drop to his knees at any moment and beg Yuri for forgiveness. She hopes the guilt eats at him, hopes it keeps him awake at night.

“Do you want me to braid it for you?”

Yuri nods again, eyes meeting Mila’s in the mirror.

It was a soothing sort of exercise in bonding. Yuri closes his eyes and for a long moment Mila thought he had fallen asleep, lost into the soft tugging of his hair as Mila braids it like Otabek had taught her. But then the door opens and his eyes snap open as quickly as if he had only blinked. Mila sees the men from the mirror, two of them, all rough hands and scraggly beards stumbling into the room like drunks. They’re showing off their guns, making sure that they could see them. They probably wouldn’t hesitate to use them- on her, at least. They wouldn’t dare harm Alexei’s toy, not anywhere that was visible. 

Mila stands quickly, placing herself between Yuri and the men as if she could stop them somehow. She knows how this goes, and also knows that she doesn’t stand a chance against them but she at least has to try.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Something wicked comes over the man on the left’s face. “Get out. We have no business with you.”

“You have no business with him either.”

The man on the right grins and steps forward. “Aren’t you sweet? Just step aside, sweetheart. You don’t have to make this so hard.” The other man laughs. 

“No. I’ll tell Alexei that you were in here.”

“You’re not supposed to be here either, so really, it’s a lose-lose, don’t you think? Altin’s not here, and neither's the Boss so how about you step out and let us have a little fun with this one here?”

“She said fuck off,” Yuri says. Mila can feel him moving behind her, hands curling into fists. She sticks her arm out, stopping him from stepping in front of her. He’s too reckless. She knows he wouldn’t hesitate to try and stop them.  

“You’ve got a mouth on you, don’t you?” The man on the right says. “I see Alexei hasn’t fucked that out of you. How about we see if I’m better?” 

“I’ll fucking kill you,” Yuri says, gritting his teeth. “Get out of my room.”

“We can do this the easy way,” the man on the left says, “or we can do this the hard way, now-” As he speaks he steps closer and closer, slowly slinking up to them like some beast about to seize its prey. Mila kicks at him, hard, and it’s enough to draw a pained groan out of him and slow him down but not enough to stop him entirely. He’s angry now, face contorting into something ugly. The man on the right moves and grabs Mila by her hair, yanking hard enough to pull a few strands out as he does.

She lets out a pained yelp, grabbing at the man’s wrists and scratching hard enough to leave big angry welts but not enough for blood. There’s laughter, somewhere, there’s Yuri’s voice, but there’s a sharp pain against her face that leaves her vision swimming, blackness creeping in at the edges, threatening to close in entirely. 

“You should learn to respect those above you,” someone says, dragging her forward by the hair as if she weighed nothing. Mila can taste blood in her mouth, can already feel her eyes swelling shut from where they’d hit her. She can hear Yuri shouting at them to let her go but it’s of no use. She wanted so badly to keep them away from him. Have them take her instead, but not Yuri.

The man throws her out of the room, her body like a rag doll with the way it thuds dully against the floor of the hallway. It hurts. All of it hurts. She tries to stand but can only manage a weak crawl over to the door. The man is still there, blocking her entry. She can see her reflection on his shoes, they’re so shiny.

“Don’t worry,” he says, crouching low enough to meet her eyes, “after him, you can have a turn, too.” He kisses the top of her head and then stands before entering the room and closing the door on her. She pounds her fists against the door as hard as she can, using whatever strength she can muster for such a simple task. 

“Don’t touch him!” She cries out. “Don’t fucking touch him!” 

Behind that door, Yuri is alone.


	5. The Good Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the plot thickens

A well placed tip somehow lands wayward cop Yuuri Katsuki in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He doesn’t speak a lick of russian, can’t understand the way he’s supposed to go and his contact has supposedly left him for dead, disappearing to nowhere, phone ringing once before going straight to voicemail. He has either turned it off or gotten rid of it completely. 

 

It’s raining the day he arrives, stepping out of the airport with an expired badge that means nothing in this foreign country and just two sets of clothes stuffed into a carry on. It’s cold that day, too, a chill in the air that his coat can’t keep off his skin, much less when it’s wet, the rainwater soaking through the fabric and to his skin. 

 

He looks around; there are no signs that he can follow, no one he can turn to for help. Even if the streets weren’t completely empty he doesn’t think his Russian is good enough to be able to strike up a conversation with a random stranger. Phichit had told him before he’d boarded the plane that this was a dead end at best. There were too many ways to count all the reasons this could go bad. 

 

But it didn’t matter much. There were many risks Yuuri was willing to take. Even if the tip lead nowhere, even if there was no Yakov in Saint Petersburg or anywhere else in Russia he would still be exactly where he’d always intended to be. 

 

He walks around the dimly lit streets until he comes upon a motel with the vacancy sign lit up neon and bright. His Russian is just rusty enough to get him a room for a few days. The old man behind the counter looks at him suspicious and wary. There was no hiding the fact that he was foreign; it was clear as day on his face. The man was probably wondering what someone like him was doing all the way out there, so far from home. If the man had asked, Yuuri probably wouldn’t have been able to find an easy answer for that question.

 

He pays and takes the keys from the man. Room 12 proves to be a small affair; no nice views, no nice shower or water pressure, no cable. But it’s just enough to accommodate him for the time that he needs to be there and that’s enough. The bed is queen sized with tacky red covers and pillowcases to match. The TV looks like it’s straight from the 70s and the wallpaper is not much better. The curtains hanging over the single, small window (it looks over an alleyway and the trash that litters it, he’d checked) are thick enough to block out whatever sunlight shines through the thick clouds in the morning though he suspects that at this time of year there isn’t much of that anyway.

 

He dumps his bag on the bed and starts to unpack. He already knows that he’s going to be there for a while and even though he doesn’t have many clothes with him it would make the stay easier if he tucked them away in drawers. He’s not trying to make this place feel like home, he doesn’t know if he knows what that is anymore, but he’s just trying to find comfort wherever he can.

 

It had been no easy feat to find a flight all the way out there. Ever since the angels started falling air travel had become highly restricted. The storms that came beforehand were unexpected and fierce, just the winds strong enough to easily knock a commercial flight out of the air as if it were nothing but a child’s toy. His flight there had been a mostly empty and white knuckled affair. If anything had actually happened his wouldn’t have been the only flight knocked out of the sky. He’d seen it before, on the news and printed in newspapers right next to the wreckages and sites of impact. All the homes lost, all the lives that had to be started over. No one had a proper explanation for any of it.

 

He remembers when the first Angel had fallen in Japan. It had been somewhere over in the mountains, nowhere close to him but he’d still felt the earth shake with the force of it, coffee forming perfect little ripples in his mug. He remembers everyone’s confused looks, silent and wondering if it was just another earthquake as they looked at each other.  _ Too short _ , someone had said. Definitely not an earthquake. Everyone reluctantly moved on with their lives, with work. Come lunchtime Yuuri had nearly forgotten about it, too busy with patrols and reports. In the breakroom someone had turned on the TV and it was on every channel. You couldn’t avoid it if you tried. 

 

But Yuuri hadn’t tried, no one did then, that was the thing. His eyes were glued to the screen as soon as the news reporter started talking. They showed the smoke, the fire, the felled trees around the zone of impact. There were a few bits and pieces of blurry footage that showed the angel, filthy, skin smoking but bright white wings gleaming and so beautifully out of place.

 

There had been a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding it. Those that thought it was all fake couldn’t deny it now that it had happened so close to home. Candles were lit at temples, those that could prayed fervently even though it seemed that no one was listening anymore. Heaven was falling right over their heads and none of them could do a thing about it but wait for the world to follow right after.

 

It all seems so far away now. Standing in the middle of that motel room in Saint Petersburg he feels like he’s looking back at someone else’s memories instead of his own. 

 

He’d had to leave his gun back in Japan. Even with the angels falling, even if it had been the end of the world, he knows they wouldn’t have let him take it on the plane with him. That was the first order of business. He needed to get a gun and then he could deal with everything else. 

 

His phone starts ringing. He walks over to it and picks it up without looking at the caller ID. The number is unsaved but he knows who it is. 

 

“Phichit.”

 

“Good. You made it,” he says. The sound of Phichit’s voice comes almost as a relief, the only familiar voice he’s heard all day. 

 

“I made it,” Yuuri confirms. “I managed to get a room for a few nights but I need a gun. After that we can figure out wherever it is that I need to go.” 

 

“That bad, huh?” There is laughter in Phichit’s voice. 

 

“It’s… quiet,” he says. He starts pacing around the room. There’s not much space for that. Twenty paces all around, maybe, from the front door to the bathroom, then the window, and back again. “But I like to be prepared. I don’t know what to expect here.”

 

“Well, I’ve got good news for you,” Phichit tells him.

 

“I hope so. The contact left me high-and-dry. I haven’t heard from him since Tokyo.”

 

Phichit laughs, the sound clear through the phone’s speakers. It’s almost like he’s right there in the room with Yuuri and not halfway across the world, still stuck in Japan. “I managed to get a hold of him. He was using a burner phone.”

 

“He probably got rid of it, then.”

 

“Right. This was during your flight, I think. Probably why you couldn’t get a hold of him when you landed. Anyway, not important. What is important about the guy, Yakov? I managed to get a hold of him, too.” 

 

“That  _ is _ good news,” Yuuri says, instantly perking up.

 

“I told you. Now, listen.”

  
  


Yuuri takes a shower after his call with Phichit ends. He hadn’t realized how sore his muscles were until the hot water hits them, all that stress and tension washing away along with a the grime of a days travels. He sighs in relief, feeling his eyelids droop as he relaxes against the spray. How long had it been since he last slept? So long now that he couldn’t remember when the last time had been. Twenty-four hours, maybe forty-two. Perhaps even longer than that. He couldn’t be sure. 

 

When he finally makes it out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist, his eyes fall on the bed and something like yearning fills his chest. But he can’t sleep, not yet, not when there is still so much to do. No matter how much he wants to just fall down on the mattress and pass out there are things he has to get done first. Sleep could come later, after everything was said and done. 

 

He drops the towel and turns to study himself in the smudged mirror. His hair hangs black and limp over his eyes, the ends still wet from the shower. It had gotten longer but he couldn’t be bothered to cut it. Under his eyes were dark and heavy bags from too many sleepless nights. His ribs were littered with the dull yellow of healing bruises.

 

He dresses quickly in simple and comfortable clothes. His hair he pushes back and away from his face before stepping into his sneakers. Phichit had given him the address of the place and he’d carefully written it down on the back cover of a bible he’d found in a drawer of the nightstand. He rips the piece with writing on it and slips it into the back pocket of his jeans. Lastly he grabs his empty holster which Phichit promises won’t be empty for much longer. 

 

There’s a nervous sort of tension rising up in his chest as he steps outside and locks the door behind him. As he pockets the room key he can’t help but noticing how quickly the chill settles in all around him, making his fingers ache from it. It had stopped raining some time before but the air still smells like earth and storms. 

 

He’s not scared. He trusts Phichit- and his own skill and experience- to get him through this in one piece, or at least alive and relatively unscathed. It was the man, Yakov, who he didn’t trust, even if he had never met him. He had his expectations, he wouldn’t deny that. He had never been very good at trusting people, even before all of this. It came as a part of the job, his old job, and it transferred to this one, too. As he walked he imagined a big burly man, someone that could kill him with just one punch- not that it could be that difficult to accomplish in the first place. He imagines a million different faces on a million different bodies, going through a million different scenarios. None of them end well for him.

 

He makes his way to the pool hall with his hands tucked in his pockets and his head hanging low. He wants to make his way through the dimly lit, desolate streets unnoticed. 

 

He passes clubs with their loud, repetitive music, smooth beats and neon pouring out of their open doors and onto the sidewalk. He passes restaurants, closed and eerie, with their windows and doors shuttered and locked tight to ward off thieves. 

 

A city at night is different than a city by day. Where some parts come alive others fall silent. Yuuri is sure that if he were to walk these same streets the next day, with the sun out and shining, he wouldn’t be able to recognize it.

 

He finds the pool hall behind a bar and under a fire escape, tucked away in a trash strewn and smokey alley. It’s hidden well enough that he wouldn’t have been able to find it if he hadn’t been looking for it. There is no sign above it that gives away what could lie inside, just a neon 8-ball. He takes one finally deep breath before pushing the door open; It’s old and well worn, the wood rough under his palm. Some paint chips away but it’s too dark to see what the color it could be. 

 

He steps inside and finds that it’s almost stiflingly hot. The music that from outside had been nothing more than a low thrum takes form now, soft words and a slow beat. It sounds like something he could have heard before, at home while cooking dinner or on the radio while he patrolled around the city until his shift ended. That seems like a such a faraway place in that moment. The Yuuri now, in a beat down pool hall in Russia couldn’t be the Yuuri back then who sat at speed traps sipping on coffee and giving tickets to drivers with bad attitudes. 

 

He lets the door shut behind him quietly. No one turns to look at him, no one cares to pay attention to the strange new man that looks so utterly out of place there. 

 

The first thing he sees, now at the entrance, is the bar. There are a few men sitting there, sipping on their drinks with a lazy sort of languor while the bartender wipes down some glasses with a rag. There are a few tables, too, though these are mostly empty save for the two people sitting in a dark, quiet corner, and what looks suspiciously like a drug deal.

 

He squints and looks around. Any of these men could be Yakov though it was almost impossible to make out any defining features through the dark, and the hazy smoke that lingers. Or maybe he wasn’t there at all though he had hoped he would be. Phichit had told them the man was always there. 

 

Slowly, he moves across the short space and takes a seat at the bar. He knows the Russian word for beer and vodka. He doesn’t plan on drinking much but it’s always nice to have a bottle at hand. If worse comes to worse he could always use it to smash in a few heads though he would really prefer it if it didn’t actually come to that. 

 

Beyond the bar are the pool tables. There are a few men playing, lit cigars hanging from their lips, tips burning bright red like beacons. Smoke settles all around them like a heavy fog and the  _ clack-clack _ of the balls against one another fills the lonesome, empty spaces between songs. 

 

“Can I get you anything else?” 

 

Yuuri’s eyes flick up to stare at the bartender. He had spoken in very clear though accented english. He almost breathes a sigh of relief at hearing something so familiar for the first time since he’d gotten there.

 

“Yes, actually,” Yuuri says. The man is watching him, eyes careful and guarded. “I’m looking for a man.” 

 

The man scoffs, almost laughs, and places down on the bar the glass he had been wiping.  _ Clink _ . “You know how many men pass through here?”

 

Yuuri looks over his shoulder. The two men with the drugs had gone off, whether separately or together he didn’t know, but they had done it quietly enough to not draw his attention to the fact. In another life maybe he would have cared enough to cuff them and drag them off to the station; Cop Yuuri always doing what’s right. That was him then, this is him now. The rest of the tables are empty just like when he’d gotten there. At the pool tables Yuuri manages to count five men through the smoky haze.

 

He turns back to the bartender and says, “I’m going to guess not a lot.”

 

The man laughs- it’s a better reaction than what he could have hoped for. 

 

“This man you’re looking for. He got a name?”

 

“Yakov,” Yuuri tells him. “That’s all I got. Someone told me I might be able to find him here.”

 

The man arches a brow. “Someone?” 

 

Yuuri shrugs. “A contact. Didn’t give a name and I didn’t care enough to ask. Is Yakov here, or not?”

 

“If he was, what business do you have with him?”

 

“I come to offer my help.”

 

“Your help?” Yuuri nods. “Ha. That’s a good one.”

 

“I’m serious.”

 

“I can see that you are,” the man says, “And I haven’t said anything against it. Wait here.” 

 

Yuuri watches as the man goes, stepping out from behind the bar and disappearing to a room somewhere in the back behind the pool tables. 

 

He turns back to the drink in front of him. His hand is wet; he had been holding on to the bottle the entire time and hadn’t even realized. It was his lifeline. 

 

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, taking small, idle sips of his beer as he waits. Time does not exist inside the 8-Ball. He feels like he could walk outside and find that hours, maybe even days, have gone by while he’s inside, exchanging pleasantries with the bartender hoping to get even the smallest lead. He checks his phone but finds that Phichit hadn’t called to check in on him. He was probably waiting for Yuuri to call first. 

 

He startles when a man manifests out of nowhere, taking a seat on the stool next to his. Out of all the empty stools there, he wonders, mildly annoyed, why he had to choose the one right next to him. He notices that the bartender, too, has returned. He places a drink in front of the strange man even though Yuuri hadn’t heard him ask for one. 

 

The man is looking at him and after a moment he says in English, “You’re not from around here. 

 

Yuuri feels suddenly nervous and scrutinized. The man is older with a well worn, weathered face and already balding. But he had ageless eyes, deep and dark, stoic and composed. He seemed like the kind of man that saw everything; the smallest mistakes, the looks and mannerisms that could easily give one away. Yuuri feels like if he meets his eyes the man will know his entire story in an instant. 

 

“I’m not.”

 

The man nods as if acknowledging something to himself. “Japan?”

 

Yuuri looks at him, fingers tightening around the bottle. “What gave it away?”

 

“The accent,” the man says with a shrug. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

 

“Business.”

 

“Business? You don’t look like any business man I’ve ever seen.”

 

“A different sort of business than what you’re used to, then. I’m looking for a man.”

 

The man brings his drink up to his lips and takes a sip. Yuuri winces. He can’t imagine having anything stronger than beer, not right now. His stomach wouldn’t be able to handle it with how tight it’s knotting up and twisting itself around and around. What the man is drinking must be pretty strong, too, because he winces as he swallows it down and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before letting out a satisfied sigh. 

 

“There are a lot of men here in Russia. But let me give you some advice: look elsewhere. The man you seek is not here.” He is the second man to tell him that, words carefully measured and sure. Even with no other details of who Yuuri seeks, this strange new man seems to think that, without a doubt, he is not there. 

 

“I think I’ll stick around for a while,” Yuuri says, even with all the new doubts manifesting inside of him, “maybe I’ll get lucky and find who I am looking for.”

 

Yuuri expects some sort of rebuttal. This isn’t his terf, after all, he has no right to speak like he is. He’s the stranger in the village, and it shows. He should take his drink and leave, make his way back to his room and tell Phichit that it really was a dead-end after all.

 

What he doesn’t expect, however, is when the man stands, places a hand on his shoulder and says, “If you’re going to stick around, how about a game, then?” His head tips to the side, motioning to where the pool tables are.

 

Yuuri has never been good at pool but he could make for a pretty decent game nonetheless. Besides, he doesn’t think the man is expecting him to be a world pool champion. He stands, eyeing the man up and down as he waits for an answer. There was something else going on. 

 

He agrees to a game anyway, not finding any reason to decline the invitation. He follows the man to the tables out back, three steps behind him the entire time, and grabs a cue of his own. It’s smooth in his palm, hefty. The other men there seem to disperse, going off somewhere to the back or to the bar to get a drink. No one is watching or paying too much attention to them, like they’ve suddenly become invisible.

 

“How the hell did you manage a flight here?” The man makes the first move, of course; concentrated, easy. He’s done this before, a million times, probably. It must be nothing more than muscle memory now. “You’re solids.”

 

Yuuri nods, a little clumsy as he leans over the table but somehow managing to pocket two. “It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap. Not many airlines are willing to risk it.”

 

“It’s a dying industry. Soon there will be nobody willing to. It’s a liability.”

 

“What?” Yuuri asks. “You think angels will keep falling forever?”

 

The man shrugs. “Could be. No one really knows, do they?”

 

Yuuri shakes his head. No one knows much of anything, these days. “I guess not.” 

 

“So why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?” 

 

“Huh?” Yuuri’s head snaps up at the man’s words. He had been watching him, at the look of concentration on his face as he focused on the game, making idle conversation about the angels, about Yuuri’s flight there. Nothing serious until now.

 

“You didn’t come all this way just to help a man,” he says, straightening up. There’s a serious sort of look on his face all of a sudden, bordering close to anger and defensiveness. 

 

Yuuri thinks about it for a moment but finding no reason to lie says, “the Angels.” The man keeps looking at him, clearly waiting for more. “I came here for the Angels.”

 

“No need to say it twice.” His voice is harsh and he’s suddenly cold, staring at Yuuri with such intensity he thinks the look alone will burn a hole into him. “But like I said, what you’re looking for is not here. We don’t sell-”

 

“Woah,” Yuuri says, holding up his hands in front of his chest as if to say  _ hold on _ . “I didn’t come here to buy.” The man’s face shifts imperceptibly so. Yuuri barely catches it. “I came here for them, to help free them.”

 

They’re not playing pool anymore; the man pulls away from the table, placing the stick back on the rack. Yuuri follows and does the same, waiting intently for something, anything, to show that he hasn’t come all this way for nothing.

 

“In Japan you have the same problem, no? With the Yakuza.”

 

“Yes,” Yuuri nods. “But it’s not as bad as it is here. We have our underground rings and such, sure, but is it not better to cut it off from the source?”

 

The man looks at him, eyes roaming over his face. “And tell me, how do you plan to do something like that?” 

 

“I know about the man, Alexei. He’s the leader around here, isn’t he?”

 

The man snorts. “He’s no leader of mine but he is of plenty others who follow him blindly and faithfully. You won’t be able to kill him; don’t be foolish.”

 

Yuuri listens to the man’s words carefully, knowing that he’s serious about this. But so is he and knowing this won’t scare him off.  “Maybe not kill him, then, but I’ll dismantle the rings from the inside out if I have to but I’ll do it.” His throat closes up as the sudden image of Minami appears in his mind. It’s the same one he’d been carrying with him for a while, the one that keeps him awake late into the night. “What’s happening here and in the rest of the world isn’t right.”

 

“You’re a stupid man,” he says but offers his hand. Yuuri takes it hesitantly and shakes it. “But a good one nonetheless. You’ll do alright, here.”

 

Yuuri smiles. “Thank you, Yakov.”

  
  


“How did you know?” Yakov asks him later. They’re in his office, the same room where Yuuri knows he had been when he had first arrived at the 8-Ball. There’s a big mahogany desk taking over most of the space and an old, well-worn couch pushed up under the only window in the room, the glass tinted darkly. From the mini-fridge under the desk Yakov procures a water bottle that he promptly hands to Yuuri.

 

Yuuri takes the bottle and looks at him. Yakov looks like a man he would never expect, a regular old pool shark if he ever saw one. “How did I know you were you?” Yakov nods and Yuuri just shrugs. “You could have honestly been anyone but it was the way you reacted when I brought up the angels.”

 

“What, I was too nice?” 

 

Now it’s Yuuri’s turn to shake his head. “You cared. You thought I was here to buy and you looked about ready to rip my head off.”

 

Yakov’s arms are crossed over his chest. He’s leaning back on that big leather chair behind the desk, eyes stuck to the fading scenery outside. “You wouldn’t have been the first one. It makes me sick to think about it, the way they just pass them around, dealing them out like playing cards, Angels and humans alike.”

 

Yuuri swallows, throat bobbing up and down. He knows what that’s like. The trade in Japan might not be as big or prosperous as if was here but it was still there, a dark stain growing progressively bigger and bigger with each passing day. He had seen the abuse firsthand, the destruction. “That’s why I’m here.”

 

“You can try,” Yakov tells him, “but I doubt you’ll get anything done.”

 

“Have you tried?” Yuuri asks. 

 

“I’ve done my share,” Yakov says, “as much as I’m willing to risk. Many that escape come here for safety before moving on. I provide them papers and safe passage but I don’t go actively seeking to liberate them. That’s a death sentence and I like my head without a bullet in it.”

 

“I’m here to help in any way I can.”

 

“I know you are,” Yakov says, “and I also know that men like you can be reckless. Alexei is capable of worse things than killing you. Remember that.”

 

-

 

Yuri tries not to look scared as the men approach him but he can’t stop his body as it takes a step back and then another until he’s bumping against the dresser. He feels the rage clawing its way out of him, twisting in his gut until he can barely breathe. It’s suffocating, his fists curling at his sides into tight fists. He feels like he could kill these men, rip them into pieces for what they did to Mila and what they intend to do with him.

 

But his human form is limiting. He still feels like a newborn on legs and hasn’t quite figured out how everything works. Looking at these men and how much bigger than him they are he knows it wouldn’t take much for them to take him down. He’s weak, all slender, awkward limbs. It’s moments like these that make him wonder how humanity had managed to survive for so long.

 

He pulls his wings tight against his body, not wanting to give them more leverage than they already have. This seems to amuse them, somehow; the men laugh, taking a step towards him. They’re not going to kill him, Yuri knows that like he knows that they won’t hurt him in any way that will leave physical marks. They’re too scared of Alexei to do that but not scared enough to just leave him alone. He doesn’t want to think about what they will do to him but the possibilities run mercilessly all through his head. Outside, he can hear Mila yelling and knocking against the door. 

 

“You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” 

 

He looks at the man who speaks, trying not to show how scared he is. The man reaches out, fingers brushing against strands of his hair and the edge of his jaw but Yuri is quick to knock his hand aside. 

 

“Don’t touch me.” 

 

The man whose hand he had slapped away grinds his teeth, raising his hand like he’s going to slap him for it but the other man stops him, wrapping a hand around his wrist and tugging his arm back down to his side. 

 

“Don’t,” he tells him, “No marks.” 

 

The men look at Yuri, heat in their eyes. They’re going to take him, like Alexei had. They’re going to use him, his body, in that way that makes pain blossom all over and his stomach heave in wholly unfamiliar ways. He won’t let them. Even if he has to fight with everything he has he won’t let them. 

 

“We’re going to do more than just touch you.” 

 

There are not many places that Yuri can run off to; his room is small and the men are blocking out the door. What could he do? The balcony was always an option. He had thought about it too many times to count but then the fall would certainly injure him and then it would only be a matter of time before the men caught up to him. There was also the bathroom only a few steps away but there were no windows or any other way out. He would be stuck there until the men either broke down the door or someone finally arrived to help. 

 

It’s in that moment that he wishes almost desperately for Otabek to be there. His had been a steady presence by the door, quiet and easy while he and Mila spent hours talking. He had grown quiet during those days after Alexei, doing his job without a single word or glance in Yuri’s direction. But he never touched him and he never yelled and if it was the best he could get then he would easily take it, no questions about it. 

 

Otabek could stop them, he thinks. He doesn’t want to rely on anyone else while he’s there but he’s dizzy with the thought of it, knowing that he could easily stop all of this but he had disappeared off somewhere and was currently nowhere to be found. Not even Mila knew where he was and he thinks it’s too late to ask now when he’s cornered like some sort of animal. 

 

But the truth of the matter is that Otabek is gone. No matter how much Yuri suddenly wants him there he couldn’t make him appear out of thin air to save him from those two assholes. He was one his own and so he’d have to deal with them on his own. 

 

“How about you come here and make it easier for us, huh?” They weren’t asking, not really. They were demanding it, sugar coating the words so that he wouldn’t resist as hard. Maybe if they’re nice enough Yuri would fall right into their arms, let them take him any way they liked; he would rather die than let that happen. 

 

So he fights. Otabek isn’t there and there’s no way that Mila would be able to make her way inside. Even if she did they could easily overpower her again. Maybe one man would have been easier to take down but two of them working together was nearly impossible. Yuri was fast but he wasn’t strong, not like they were, and he wasn’t tall. 

 

He backs away, bumping his hip against the corner of the dresser, and to the balcony, feeling the cold glass of the door against his back. He’s sure there will be a bruise in the morning. Lately there have been a lot of those all over him. They’re ugly marks of ownership, worse than the collar around his neck. At least that could be taken off; the bruises stayed for days, maybe even longer. He hated waiting for them to fade, hated seeing them every time he took his clothes off.

 

“Why are you trying to run, kitten?” One of the men says. He has a big, ugly scar running down the left side of his face, a starburst of damaged tissue that starts at his temple and snakes its way all the way down to the edge of his jaw. But his eyes- his eyes are dark and mean. There’s no life there. It makes Yuri shiver, goosebumps rising up all over his skin. “There’s no need to be scared.”

 

The other one is young, younger than most, with dark blonde hair trimmed short. He’s grinning madly, like he can’t stop thinking about all the things he’s going to do to Yuri once he gets his hands on him. He almost looks like a child, cheeks still round and red with eagerness. 

 

“Don’t come any closer.”

 

He hates the way they laugh at him, like he’s a child. They’re not going to take him seriously and who would? He’s nothing here, he’s nothing to these men.

 

The closest thing to him is the lamp. He reaches for it blindly, almost knocking it over in his haste. He throws it at the man closest to him, the one with the scar, but he dodges it quickly. It barely brushes against his arm before it’s smashing into a million pieces against the floor. The sound makes Yuri flinch.

 

“Yuri?!” Comes Mila’s voice, yelling from outside the door and pounding against it desperately. “Are you okay?”

 

He opens his mouth, ready to shout something when the blonde comes up to him and covers his mouth with his big hand, the other coming around his waist, holding him close to his body, wings pressed uncomfortably and almost painfully between their bodies. Yuri can feel it, all of it; the man’s harsh breathing so close to his ear, the pressure of his hand against his stomach, the sudden feeling of being airborne as the man lifts him off the ground. 

 

“Let me go!” His voice is muffled by the man’s hand and barely heard. It almost doesn’t sound like he’s saying words at all, just sounds that sound like they could possibly mean something. He kicks out but there’s nothing in front of him. He realizes he’s just wasting all this energy so he stops, glaring holes into the other man as he moves closer to him. 

 

He laughs. “I’m going to make you pay for that, you know?” 

 

“Fuck you.”

 

The man steps forward, hands running up and down Yuri’s thighs. With just the shorts there’s not much that’s not covered. He can feel the man’s hands on him, rough and calloused against the softness of his skin. It reminds him so much of Alexei. He can’t help but cry out like he’s been hurt even though they haven’t really done anything yet. 

 

“Shut him up,” one of the men says, “I can’t concentrate with him and that bitch outside making so much noise.”

 

“I have something that can shut her up,” the other one laughs, the sound disgustingly obscene. “Take his shorts off.”

 

Yuri feels his heart speed up tenfold at hearing the man’s words, his eyes widening. He can’t let them do this to him. So he waits until the older man is close enough, waits until he thinks its safe and then kicks out hard, foot connecting with the man’s stomach and sending him stumbling backwards towards the bed. The momentum is so great the man holding Yuri stumbles back, too, and with his grip loosened Yuri manages to slip away from his grasp and land on the floor. 

 

The slap to his face comes sudden and sharp, almost unexpected. Yuri had been so focused on being back on the ground that he hadn’t noticed the younger man moving towards him. His fingers tangle in Yuri’s hair, pulling hard and undoing Mila’s careful braid. Yuri cries out at the sharp sting, reaching back and wrapping his fingers around the man’s wrist, trying to stop him from pulling. He lands on the floor, flat on his back. His wing is throbbing from the impact and for a split second he fears that he’s broken it.

 

The older man’s foot comes down hard on his stomach, leaving a boot shaped mark on the white fabric of his shirt. All the air leaves his lungs and tears prick a the corners of his eyes. He doesn’t want to cry, doesn’t want to let these men see him cry. There’s a certain weakness in it and he doesn’t want to give them that. He gasps, clawing at whatever he can reach. He feels like he’s going to vomit but his throat is suddenly clogged up.

 

He curls up on his side as someone begins tugging at his shirt, rough fingers pulling until the fabric tears at the collar, leaving a wide gap that exposes Yuri’s chest to the men. He shivers, fingers trying to hold the fabric together. Goosebumps rise up on his skin, almost violent. 

 

He feels a hand running up the back of his thigh, over the curve of his ass, stopping for a moment to squeeze. When he tries to kick at whoever this might be they grab his ankle and tug. His shirt, or what remains of it, is ripped off the rest of the way. The younger man forces his mouth open and stuffs the fabric in it, almost choking him. 

 

“I wouldn’t risk it with anything else,” he says to his partner, slightly out of breath, “fucker would probably bite my cock off.” 

 

“Yeah, probably. Take his shorts off. Let’s get on with it.”

 

Yuri looks at him, eyes wide. There’s nothing he can say to get them to stop. From where he is on the floor he can see the man’s bulge, clearly outlined in his dress pants. 

 

When Yuri feels hands at his hip, fingers dipping down past the hem of his shorts he uses the rest of his strength to claw at the man’s arm, leaving big, angry welts as he does. He’s almost disappointed that he hadn’t managed to draw blood but doesn’t give himself enough time to think about it. He twists away from the men, spitting his tattered shirt out of his mouth and gasping for breath he hadn’t know he had been missing.

 

From where he is on the floor, Yuri can see it. He looks at the floor near the bed where the gun now rests. Its presence is sudden; The men must not have noticed it there, must not have seen it or heard it fall but the  _ click _ of it hitting the carpet still echoes around on his head. It’s there, calling to him. His mind runs through a million different scenarios, all of them ending with him blowing the men’s brains out. Two bullets is all it would take if his aim was good and if he was quick enough but he couldn’t even be sure of that. If he failed, it was all over. He didn’t even think the men cared about the consequences anymore; if he forced their hand he knows they wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.

 

The next time they come for him he lets them, going pliant as a rag doll until they drag him close enough so he can kick the gun under the bed. They don’t notice that, either, and he almost sighs in relief. He has plans for that later but right now he has to focus on the men pinning him down hard to the bed.

 

-

 

Turns out being assigned to watch after Yuri doesn’t stop Alexei from taking him on jobs. Otabek shouldn’t say that he’s surprised but he is; the gun burns against his side when he tucks it into his holster that day. He hadn’t had to use it in a while, holding it in his hand now feels strange and foreign in a way that it shouldn’t. 

 

There’s an uneasy feeling gathering in the pit of his stomach. None of this feels good, even if Alexei insists that it’s just a routine job it feels like something bad is going to happen. 

 

He’s not given any more details besides this. Actually, Alexei is rather secretive about the whole thing, gathering the men and giving instructions. Go in, shoot the humans, take the angels; no one should be left inside, alive or otherwise, and no one should be allowed to escape, no matter what. 

 

The location they turn up at is rather familiar; It’s in a more rundown part of the city where the deals go on and the brothels light up at night. There’s no one walking around, no one to notice them and ask too many questions. It’s exactly how Alexei likes it, quiet and unassuming. Otabek had driven by there too many times to count but actually walking by there he finds that it’s almost unrecognizable.  

 

He leads the charge, of course, gun drawn and hands steady as if he were only going for a stroll down the street. Otabek gets the privilege of walking close behind him. He’s wary, tense, aware that he’s walking blind into something that might as well be a trap. But then he realizes that if it were Alexei wouldn’t be going in first. Actually, Alexei wouldn’t have come at all.

 

The building is derelict like all the others around it, windows smashed in and graffiti everywhere. It looks abandoned, like no one’s lived in it for years except the rats and the pigeons nesting up on the roof. 

 

Otabek’s hands are clammy around his gun. It feels slippery, like it’ll fall out of his grip if he doesn’t hold it hard enough but even then it’s uncertain. 

 

Alexei stops outside of the entrance. It’s dark inside and the doorway without a door looks like a gaping maw, waiting to swallow them up. Otabek falters while Alexei repeats their orders and leads them inside. Even from outside he can smell the decay and the dust. Such an old building has history, has seen too many lives and must be harboring others. 

 

The other men push past him, sparing him strange glances as they wonder what the hell he’s still doing out there. Only a few seconds later does he hear the gunshots, the sound of running footsteps. Screaming.

 

Otabek had heard, very vaguely, of these underground movements. They were spoken about in dimly lit corners of bars over empty shot glasses. You spoke about them in whispers with a sneer on your face and never any other way. He’d heard Alexei speaking about them, too. He hated them, detested them with a burning force. He had slammed his hands down on the table once and said, “I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way.” Otabek had tried not to flinch; it was all about the business, always about the money. He had never seen anyone get in Alexei’s way and make it out on the other side. 

 

Inside, someone screams. Otabek realizes very vaguely that he’s the only one left outside. Taking a deep breath he braces himself and enters the building. It’s dark inside and it takes a while for his eyes to adjust. What he sees, mostly, is all the dust and rubble all over the place. It’s just as graffitied inside as it is outside, gang tags and crude jokes decorating the walls. Stepping further in he finds filthy mattresses lining the floors, packs of snacks and cigarettes and dirty clothes. He’s supposed to be working a job but everything about this just feels wrong. 

 

The sound of Alexei’s voice resonated deep inside his head:  _ Kill the humans, take the angels. Kill the humans, take the angels.  _ The sound of more gunshots make him jump. He’s not scared but he won’t deny the racing of his heart, the way it pounds so hard between his ribs like it will burst out at any moment. 

 

He moves from empty room to empty room, looking for something, anything. Whoever had been in there, whatever resistance, Angel savior group had been there had retreated to the back of the building, looking for a way out to avoid capture or a bullet between the eyes. He didn’t know what he would do if he found someone. His job, maybe? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s killed someone and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Any other time he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It’s easy for him to disconnect most of the time, makes it easier to go in for the kill and not think about it later when he’s trying to sleep or go on with his life. He’s seen what it can do if you let it fester, all that guilt and remorse. Sometimes it’s better to just not feel anything at all. 

 

Of course some of them would fight back. They could never deal with just the docile ones, the ones that gave in and easily accepted their fate. Alexei liked a challenge; Otabek liked to get things done as easily as possible. No hassle, no trouble, no sweat broken. She comes up from behind, baseball bat in her hands that connects solidly with Otabek’s shoulder. Pain flares up and shoots from the point of contact and he goes flying to the ground. Bits of rubble and broken glass dig into his palm. It’s nothing that a few minutes with a tweezer couldn’t fix but still he hisses through his teeth at the sting. His gun had gone flying out of his hands, landing somewhere across the room.

 

“If you wanted to incapacitate you should aim for the back of the head,” he tells her, staggering to his feet and hoping she won’t do just that. She doesn’t try to stop him nor does she try to hit him again. She’s clutching the bat to her chest as if it will protect her, eyes wide and fearful. No one had told her she would have to fight and he could tell she didn’t exactly know how, not any way that would take him down. 

 

But Otabek isn’t looking for a fight.  _ Quick and easy. _ Ignoring the pain in his shoulder he reaches for his back up gun, the just-in-case gun and points it at her. His hand doesn’t waver, his gaze is steady. “Take me to where the others are.”

 

She shakes her head, puffing out her chest. She’s trying to look braver than she feels; Otabek can admire that. “There are no others.”

 

He takes a step and then another until she’s backed up against the filthy, crumbling wall. The  _ click _ of the safety coming off is loud and it makes her flinch. “Take me.”

 

It astounds Otabek sometimes what people will do when faced with the certainty of death. It’s not the gun itself that scares her, nor the bullet, but the power it holds, the destructiveness. At that moment he holds her life in her hands. With a simple squeeze of his fingers he could end it all for her and it would be so easy. He grabs the other gun off the floor as they pass, tucking it back into the holster. He’s not stupid enough to leave it behind

 

As he walks he can feel them getting further away from all the others. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he thinks about how she could be leading him into a trap. The others could very well be armed and it would be just as easy for them to end his life as it would be for him to end theirs. But he can also see the subtle way the girl’s shoulders shake, the way she keeps glancing back at him, at the gun, and gripping the bat tighter to her chest until her knuckles are white with the effort. It’s the little things he sees, the ones he knows can’t be faked, that let him know it’s not actually a trap. 

 

The building is bigger than he thought, going for several floors up and also down. He’s wary as she opens a rusted metal trapdoor on the floor and motions for him to follow her. It’s dark in there, all light cutting off about four steps in and then plunging into absolute darkness. He motions for her to go in first and then follows after. 

 

“Stop,” he says and when she does so he puts his gun back in its holster and instead takes out a lighter he keeps in his pocket. The flame isn’t much but as he closes the trapdoor and they’re plunged into absolute darkness it might as well be a life saver. It’s just enough light to guide their way though Otabek supposes the girl could have made her way through here blind. He takes the bat from her hands and urges her to keep walking. The slump of her shoulders is a defeated one. 

 

It feels like their walking for an eternity. The tunnel’s walls are void of any marks, the concrete smooth like no one had thought to come down here and mark it up. They could have walked on for miles and hours and Otabek wouldn’t notice it. But the tunnel isn’t forever. Up ahead it opens up into a room, dimly lit up with lanterns scattered all over the place. There are sleeping bags and blankets amid the empty food wrappers.

 

“Marya!”

 

Both Otabek and the girl- now Marya- startle and turn to the other woman who is running towards them. They meet somewhere in the middle, falling into each other’s arms. When they pull away they both turn to Otabek. It’s not until that moment that he notices the other people in the corner, huddled up in the corner. There are two Angels, their wings radiant, skin practically glowing. There are no collars around their necks but there are marks, the skin around their throats rubbed raw. But they’re healing, slowly blurring away the evidence until eventually there will be nothing left at all. They were wearing clothes too big for their thin frame, arms and wings wrapped around each other protectively. Despite everything that was happening up above them and moving past it, he could almost breathe a sigh of relief. 

 

“What is this?” A man steps forward, a hard look in his eyes. He’s older, almost the same age as the woman still holding Marya. A dark beard takes over most of his face and his lips are drawn into a thin line. 

 

“He has a gun,” Marya says, almost quietly, like a warning. “I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s alright,” the woman tells her but her eyes are strange. She’s looking at Marya as if to say,  _ you should have done better _ . They slowly make their way back to the angels, huddling up in a big group. Otabek doesn’t try to stop them.

 

“You should find something better than a bat,” Otabek says, letting said item fall at the man’s feet. He flinches at the sound it makes. “It’s not very effective.”

 

“You don’t belong here.” The man places a hand at his his and Otabek can see the knife there, blade sharp and glinting. 

 

“I wouldn’t try that. You wouldn’t get very much done with it, anyway.” He looks from person to person and hates the way everyone is looking at him, expecting something. “What are you all doing down here?” No one says anything. Otabek looks around; even the Angels have averted their gaze. He takes a step forward and says, “I know about the others, upstairs, the ones that didn’t make it down. Did you have friends among them? It’s too late for them now. I’m not the only one that’s here.” 

 

There are soft murmurings among the group. Otabek only catches snippets of words, a worrisome edge to them. The tension grows thicker as no one moves. 

 

“We were waiting for them,” the man says, “we were all going to escape together. If you’re going to kill us please, do it fast.” He is an animal cornered with no way out. A bad taste forms in the back of Otabek’s mouth seeing them give up so easily, thinking that he will kill them. 

 

“Artur,” the woman says but stops when he raises his hand. 

 

“It’s alright,” he tells her, “You don’t have to worry about it. We did the best that we could.”

 

Otabek shakes his head and says, “no. You wouldn’t have cornered yourselves like this. There  is a way out from here.” He takes a looks around, quickly finding the door in the corner. They would have used it, had they had the time, if Otabek had not appeared and the others had made it down here. Now they were all either dead or captured with no chance of freedom. 

 

A movement in his peripheral catches his eyes. He hadn’t noticed the angels stand but now he caught them mid-stride towards the door. Artur and Marya and the other woman were willing to sacrifice themselves, offer themselves up as a distraction so the angels might have a chance of escaping. They stop, now, when they notice him staring at them. They look like children that have been caught doing something they’re not supposed to. 

 

“I won’t kill you,” Otabek tells them. That had never been his intention in the first place. He holds his hands up in front of his chest, palms facing out towards the man in a sign of peace. “I don’t intend to hurt you but they will. There’s no time. I’ll help secure your escape but you have to be fast about it. Do you have somewhere safe you can go?” 

 

Reluctantly, as if he doesn’t want to give Otabek too much information, the man nods. “Why are you helping us?”

 

Otabek hadn’t really thought about it. Up until that point he had been working on autopilot, moving through the motions of being alive. If he stopped to think about it he was scared he’d chang his mind or grow to regret this decision. He takes a deep breath. “I’m tired of just standing by,” he says after a while.

 

“You still work for him,” Artur says and Otabek knows he’s talking about Alexei. “The unfairness, the inhumanity. It will never stop. Think about that; saving us won’t save you. You will never leave that.” 

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Otabek says, “I’ll do what I can for you like I’ll do what I can for all the others. You have a chance and I suggest you take it before the others find this place. I won’t be able to help you then.”

 

Marya steps forward and takes hold of Artur’s hand, tugging him along. Otabek watches them go, the older woman herding the angels along as she goes. Artur looks back at him, a frown on his face, but the others don’t. They just go, opening the door and stepping through to what looks like another dark tunnel leading to nowhere. When the door closes on squeaky hinges Otabek is plunged into a quiet that is almost suffocating. They hadn’t bothered to take the sleeping bags and only Artur had taken a lantern. Otabek gives it a moment and then uses the lighter to guide his way back.

  
  


Otabek can feel Alexei’s eyes on him as soon as he steps into the room where the others are. They’re gathered around something. When Otabek steps closer he can see the Angels, all of them bound together and gagged. Their eyes are wide with fear, glancing from one man to the other. It reminds Otabek of the Angels he had just let escape as they waited for him to do something. 

 

“Well?”

 

Otabek’s eyes find purchase on Alexei’s chin. He could never meet his eyes. “There were sleeping bags and clothes but nothing else.” That feeling of Alexei being able to read his mind creeps up on him again. Otabek knows it’s impossible but the way he’s looking at him, eyes roaming over his face, makes it feel like there’s a possibility there.

 

Alexei nods. “We’ll send a search party out to find those that escaped. They won’t be getting far.” Alexei turns away and doesn’t see the look of panic in Otabek’s eyes. 

 

Sitting on the floor among the angels is a man. His face has been beat to a pulp, both of his eyes slowly swelling shut. Blood is still dripping down from his lips and from under the gage and he seems to be struggling for breath. Alexei hits his face with the butt of his gun, sending him falling to his side. With his hands tied behind his back there’s not much he can do to stop his head from hitting the concrete with a sickening  _ thunk _ . Otabek flinches and averts his gaze. He doesn’t want to see this. He can clearly tell what will happen after this, almost as if it were already happening right in front of him.

 

The man makes an almost inhuman sound of pain as Alexei’s foot connects with his ribs. The distinct sound of bones cracking resonate in the room. “This man,” Alexei says, clear rage in his voice, “Is a threat to everything we have built.” All the men nod except for Otabek. “They are like a disease. If we let it spread what will become of us?” 

 

Otabek knew this for what it was. The man, the speech. This was Alexei showing off his power, setting an example for anyone who might try to go against him. Setting an example for Otabek. Even if it wasn’t direct Otabek knew that he could easily take that man’s place, face unrecognizable, body bloody and broken. It wouldn’t be that much of a loss for Alexei. There were many men willing to take his place, and would eagerly do so at the first opportunity. 

 

So Otabek stands back and watches and when Alexei hands him the gun he doesn’t even flinch. Where he had just saved five lives less than an hour later he’s about to end another. As their eyes meet the man makes a sound that to Otabek seems almost like pleading. When he pulls the trigger what follows is nothing short of deafening silence.

 

-

 

Otabek gets the call as he’s emptying out his stomach in the nearest gas station bathroom. The smell of disinfectant and piss choking him up. The tile is cold and  hard against his knees, making them ache. Sweat dots his forehead and upper lip, sliding down his temple and to his jaw. He feels devastatingly sick, like he’ll sink into the dirty floor and never again get up. But Mila is in hysterics when he answers the call, yelling something about Yuri and men and needing help, or else. Otabek feels his stomach heave again at what Mila might be implying, forcing himself up off the floor and stumbling to the car. When he hangs up with Mila, promising her to make it there as quickly as possible, he dials Alexei. 

 

He’ll have time to feel sorry for himself later. 

  
  


He’s the first to make it back to the house. It’s eerily quiet in a way that he’s completely unfamiliar with, empty save for Mila, who is panting as she stumbles down the stairs. Otabek rushes to her and grabs her around the waist so she doesn’t fall. Her face is bruised, blood drying at the corner of her mouth. She looks like a proper mess and the sight of her makes anger boil in Otabek’s stomach.

 

“Yuri,” she says, “they have him. You have to go get him.”

 

“Who?”

 

She shakes her head, frowning as she tries to think. “Two of them. The door is locked. They’re going to-”

 

“Alright,” Otabek tells her, leading her over to one of the couches and pushing her down onto it. “Wait here. I’ll go get him.” He must look calmer than he feels because Mila looks at him with something like relief on her face. It’s the first time they’d talked since that day at his apartment. 

 

He rushes up the stairs faster than he could have expected. His stomach is still turning and there is a headache starting to form behind his eyes but he forces himself to move. It’s not his best day. He reaches Yuri’s door and like Mila had said he finds it locked. There are muffled sounds coming from inside, a cry of pain that sounds distinctly like Yuri. Almost without thinking Otabek draws his gun and shoots the gun, splintered wood flying in all directions. He rams his shoulder against that remains of the door, finding that it gives way easily under his weight. 

 

All movement in the room stops. There are two of them like Mila had say and the turn to look at him in surprise. Yuri is still struggling in their grasp, chest bare as he lays splayed out on the bed. A quick scan around the room reveals a shattered lamp and what he thinks are the tattered remains of Yuri’s shirt in the corner. He doesn’t even stop to think about it as the rage he had felt upon seeing Mila consumes him completely. Adrenaline burns through his veins and the two men look at him, suddenly terrified, as he raises the gun and aims at them. He can’t kill them, won’t, with Alexei on his way, probably almost there. There is satisfaction pooling in his gut at the thought of what will happen to them once he does.

 

“Listen-” The man he recognizes as Abram says. He lets go of Yuri and steps away, hands held out in front of him. The younger man, Dima, is hesitant to follow suit. Once Yuri is free of their hold he scrambles up on the bed, grabbing a pillow to cover his chest with. His eyes are hard, almost bursting with anger as he glares at the men. Otabek knows without a doubt that Yuri would kill them if he were given the chance. 

 

“There’s nothing to listen to,” Otabek says, motioning with his gun. “Move away from him.”

 

“Like you wouldn’t have done the same,” Dima says, “always looking after a pretty thing like that. Tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

 

“Dima,” Otabek says in a warning tone. He hates the way he’s talking about Yuri, hates thinking about what they were just about to do to him.

 

“You weren’t supposed to come back yet,” Abram says, eyes flickering from Otabek to the splinters that were once the door. “Did that bitch call you?” His grin is sleazy. He looks at Dima and says, “I knew we should have shut her up.”

 

Dima starts to laugh but only manages a choked off sound as Otabek’s fist connects with his face, knocking him flat on his back. He’s barely thinking about what he’s doing, his rage the only force driving him forward. While Dima is busy trying to get over the shock Otabek moves to Abram, hitting the scarred side of his face with the butt of his gun. He would have killed them without hesitation but suddenly Mila is there, placing a hand on his arm. It makes him stop, fist halfway to it’s target. He hadn’t realized he’d dropped the gun or how ready he was to kill them with his bare hands. 

 

He looks at Mila and then he looks over at Yuri, curled up on the bed with his eyes so wide and wild. Otabek swallows and lets Mila guide him up to his feet. Later he’ll tell Alexei they’d attacked first. No one ever tells him any different. 

  
  


The most widely known but largely unspoken rule of the Bratva is that you don’t touch Alexei’s things. 

 

The men are wide eyed as they gather in Alexei’s office- or as wide eyed as they could get with their faces so swollen and bruised. Their hands are cuffed behind their backs and where Mila and Otabek get to sit they have to stand in the corner. Mila’s head is hanging low, her shoulders hunched up. She looks like a child waiting to be scolded. In front of them Alexei settles into his big leather chair. Otabek tries to ignore the discomfort he feels when Yuri is forced to kneel at Alexei’s feet.

 

“Does anyone want to explain what happened?” Alexei starts and when they hear his voice the men flinch. “I remember very clearly saying that the door should be locked at all times.”

 

Mila draws further into herself. If she could make herself small enough she could avoid Alexei’s rage and the consequences that come with it. Nothing had been made clear as of yet but Alexei’s eyes are steady on Mila as if he  _ knows _ . Somehow, he knows that it was Mila who had been in there with Yuri, Mila who had left the door unlocked. It was Mila who had been reckless. 

 

“I must have forgotten to lock the door,” Otabek says quickly before Alexei can get another word in. “It was a mistake.”

 

“A mistake,” Alexei repeats, rubbing at his chin pensively. Otabek averts his eyes. To Alexei it might look like a sign of respect. Really Otabek is scared he’ll see right through him as if he were made of glass. But Alexei is turning his attention to Yuri, fingers gripping his chin and forcing him to look up at him. Yuri flinches but he can’t move away. “Is it true? She wasn’t in the room?”

 

Otabek grips the armrest in a white knuckled grip. He keeps looking over at the men. They were fidgeting, looking at each other in confusion. Even if they were to say something what were the chances they’d be believed? Their words meant nothing here, not anymore.

 

“It’s true,” Yuri says. “I was alone.”

 

Alexei hums and lets go of Yuri’s face. He runs his fingers through his blond hair, tugging lightly at the knots. “They’ve made a mess of you, angel. I guess we’ll have to punish them, make an example out of them so the others know not to touch my things.” Yuri frowns as he listens to what Alexei is saying, staring down at his hands as they rest on his lap.

  
  


No one knows when Dima had started crying, quiet tears trailing down his cheeks. Abram is all solemn silence and every time Dima lets out a hiccupping sob he just glares at him angrily, like somehow this had all been his fault. They know what’s coming; the punishment for touching something that didn’t belong to them was the loss of a hand. In this case they would lose both and also their lives. 

 

“You should just kill us and get it over with,” Abram says, frowning. “What’s the point of drawing it out?” 

 

Alexei grins something wicked. “The point  _ is _ to draw it out.” 

 

The don’t do it in the house or anywhere near Alexei’s property. They shove Dima and Abram into one of the cars and take them out to a warehouse much like the one they had raided a lifetime ago. This one, however, is empty and with a guarantee and no one would disturb them as they worked. Otabek had been there before. He recognizes the bloodstains that hadn’t washed out of the concrete floor, the chains hanging from the ceiling for when Alexei wanted to get a bit creative. 

 

Alexei never gets his hands dirty when he could get someone else to do it for him. Otabek gets Abram and Dima into position on their knees and notices the way Alexei hangs back, watching. When Otabek takes the cleaver he knows this is as much their punishment as it is his. 


End file.
